LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©lap. ©njt^rig]^ T^xx 

Shelf.. ..HB 107 £„ 

— ^^^-l 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/Ill, — / 

PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. 



THE CONFLICT 



BETWEEN 



Capital and Labor, 



BY 



DAVID RUSSELL JONES, 

General Secretary of the United Miners 
OF Western Pennsylvania. 



PITTSBURGH : 

Levi & Bacon, 98 Smithfield Street. 



LEVI & BACON. 

PITTSBURGH. 



THE CONFLICT 



BETWEEN 



Capital and Labor, 



4 



BY 



^i2- 



DAVID RUSSELL JONES. 



%Cy^. 1380 -^--A ■ 
' Poise the cause in justice' eq^jM^ofiJej,. 

Whose beam stands sure, ^^^^i-^— :;r-T.^ 

Whose rightful cause prevails." — Shakespere, 



v^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

D. E. JOXES, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D- C 



TO THE 

Miners of the United States and England, 

AMID WHOSE fortunes AND MISFORTUNES MY 

LIFE, UP TO THE PRESENT, HAS 
BEEN SPENT, AND FOR WHOSE ELEVATION 
I AM SOLICITOUS, THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED, BY 
THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 

The germ from which this pamphlet has grown 
was my lecture on ^' The Rights and Restrictions 
of Labor/^ which had been prepared at the request 
of the Banksville miners and afterwards delivered 
in divers places throughout Pennsylvania. My offi- 
cial duties command my time during the day, and 
the proper prosecution of my legal studies demand 
my attention in the evening, hence I have not had 
sufficient spare hours to put as much rhetorical pol- 
ish on the sentences as I would like, I have been 
more careful about the thoughts than about the 
expressions. 

The second edition has been generalized, and 
consequently I enlarged the title from '' The Min- 
ing Conflict" to '' The Conflict Between Capital 
AND Labor." The former title would not be suffi- 
ciently comprehensive to include the scope of the 
observations and arguments, as the remarks on labor 
saving machinery, and on a reduction in the hours 



6 PREFACE. 

of labor, and tliouglits interwoven with the matter 
on other topics, are equally applicable to any branch 
of industry. 

I take pleasure in dedicating this pamphlet to the 
miners, with whose conditions and struggles I am, 
from experience, closely acquainted. If what I 
have w^ritten will do an}i:hing to elevate the work- 
ing men, and put the wage population of the 
United States in a just light before the public, I 
shall consider everything well done ; and with this 
hope I now submit the manuscript for publication. 

D. E. J. 

68 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, 
May 1, 1880. 



The Conflict Between Capital and Labor. 



GENERAL REMARKS. 

Capital and Labor, the two prime factors of pro- 
gress, are mutually dependent, and naturally friend- 
ly; lience the present unfriendly relations are 
unnatural, and lience inimical to the welfare of the 
masses. To encourage the philosopher in his search 
after the causes of industrial strifes, to incite the 
statesman in his efforts to destroy them, and to estab- 
lish the boundaries beyond which neither capital nor 
labor shall encroach, are duties incumbent on every 
sincere friend of a continuous prosperity, and pub- 
lic security. 

The impression that operatives and operators 
must be continually taking advantage of one another, 
in order that justice might prevail, is a mischievous 
impression, and vastly more injurious to the opera- 
tive^ than to the operator. Every thousand dollars cap- 
ital in the United States gives work to some poor 
man, and sends comfort and joy into some workino;- 
man's family. I have more sympathy for Libor than I 
have for capital; more for capital than for tl\e 
bondholder, and I have more sympathy for the 



8 GENERAL REMARKS. 

bondholder tlian for the miserable miser that is 
too timid to risk a cent for developing the resources 
of his country. 

I have no prejudice toward the rich; none in the 
least. I don't want to pull down the marble mansion ; 
I have nothing against the Brussells carpet, against 
frescoed parlors, brilliant chandeliers, or against the 
polished furniture of a beautiful home, but I ask 
the capitalist, amid these luxuries, to be just to the 
working man ; to pay the laboring men an equita- 
ble share of the profits accruing from the combined 
energies and efl:brts of capital and labor, in order 
that they may support comfortable and pleasant 
homes, and rear up intelligent and respectable chil- 
dren. 

I submit to the bondholder because he is una- 
vjidable; and if the bondholder of to-day were the 
patriotic bondholder of the w^ar, instead of the spec- 
ulator and trickster of the present, I would like him 
much better. I speak of the bond question, because 
it is a phase of the financial question, and the finan- 
cial question is closely connected with the labor 
problem; as any scheme that taxes the energies and 
industries of a people, has something to do with the 
rights of labor. 

TAXES. 

Every dollar of interest paid on a bond, cuts off a 
dollar from the pay of labor. A cent stamp on a 
match-box is a cent from the pocket of labor, and 



TAXES. 9 

every license is a receipt for what labor lias paid in 
some shape. All taxes are paid in the end by work- 
ingmen. It may be indirectly, very quietly, and 
very stealthily, but labor finally pays the taxes. The 
mill and mine owner is compelled to pay taxes to 
the city, state and national governments; these 
taxes reduce the profits on investments ; hence were 
there no taxes exacted, the workingmen could 
expect, and the capitalist could aftbrd to divide the 
amount in wages, in addition to what they now 
receive. The store-keeper pays for a license to sell, 
he charges a cent on this and a cent on that article, 
to abundantly make up the fee, and the buyer has 
to sufter. 

The millions of interest, annually paid on bonds, 
is a heavy burden upon the industries of any coun- 
try. Labor is the strength, the blood and the mar- 
rovr and everything in society. Without labor there 
can be no wealth, and any law or system of laws, 
that either directly or indirectly exacts a cent from 
the earnings of the workingmen, beyond what is 
necessary to securely protect the life, limb and 
property of the citizen, is unjust and oppressive. 
The bonds are remnants of the war, and far be it 
from me to lift up my voice to condemn any meas- 
ures that were used to save this great Union from 
disruption, and to emancipate four millions of 
human beings. The results of the rebellion are 
worth more to the human race, to its liberty and its 
civilization, than all the treasure expended^ and the 
blood poured out during the civil war. 

2 



10 TAXES. 

I tliink that we should overlook many of the 
financial transactions that were negotiated during 
the excited times of the rebellion, but we should not 
overlook trickery and cheatery of speculators, who, 
after the war was over, went to gloat and glut them- 
selves upon the sores and wounds of our country. 
It is one thing to be patriotic, quite another to be 
selfish, 

INTEMPERANCE. 

Leaving the question of taxation, I meet the 
question of moderation, which is a proper restriction 
upon labor. And right here I should write a word 
on the habits of drinking — habits that are quietly 
but surely sinking the masses into conditions of 
ignorance and dependence. I delight to see the bas- 
ket going home brimful of good things for the 
table, to see the poor enjoying themselves, but 
I hate to see a hard working man making a brute 
of himself by supping the slop from the grog- 
shop. Don't do it. It does you no good ; it does 
you an infinite amount of harm. It drains your 
pocket-book, staggers the brain, burns up the sys- 
tem, and worst of all it has poisoned the blood of 
your children, and dooms your children's children 
to mediocrity, obscurity and ignorance. You work 
hard, j^our earnings are scanty enough, and remem- 
ber that every levy passed over the counter of a 
saloon is a lev}^ less from the comforts of home. On 
pay day pass the saloon, shy the tavern as you would 



INTEMPERANCE. 11 

the spot where lurk the serpent and the hideous cr^eat- 
ures of poison and death. As tlie boa constrictor 
seizes its prey, draws its coils tighter and tighter 
around it until the helpless victim is crushed, so has 
drunkenness grasped the wage population, holds 
them fast, and is drifting them into conditions 
where they will soon become as dependent and help- 
less as the peasants of Europe. I warn the young 
and the married man that squanders the one, the 
five or ten dollars at a time. I warn him because 
he is dooming himself, because he is poisoning the 
blood and enervating the brains of his children, and 
because he is drifting the masses into a low and 
miserable condition. 

There is nothing lost by being temperate ; mil- 
lions have been lost by drunkenness and debauchery. 
Give me the one-half that the miners of the United 
States have spent in gambling and drunkenness dur- 
ing the good times, and I will pile up a fund whose 
immensity would astound the nation. With that 
fund I could shorten the hours of labor, break down 
the infamous ^' pluck mes,'^ forever separate the 
scale from the screen, and order such circum- 
stances as would give you better homes to live in, 
better clothing, better food and better everything by 
working only eight hours, than you can get now \yv 
working eleven and twelve hours per day. You 
believe this: you have been warned a thousand 
times, and now, I plead with you to abandon that 
injurious course, that rut which is surely leading you 
into the sloughs of poverty and dependence. 



12 INTEMPERANCE. 

I want to do what little I can to point out the 
danger. I hang the red lights of danger on the door- 
post of every saloon, and in front plant a few finger 
posts to point out the road that leads to the homes 
of temperance,* comfort and pleasure. I am trying 
to remove a cause that is sentencing you into the 
cheerless regions of poverty and servitude. Be care- 
ful of the one, the five and the ten dollar notes. If 
you have any to spare after satisfying the needs of 
home, put it into the savings bank, or into some safe 
organization. 

ORGANIZATION. 

And here I have struck the word organization, a 
word that comprehends the mighty power, the great 
lever that moves the social world. This universe is 
the grandest organization conceivable. Have you 
ever thought how wonderfully well this world 
moves ? A thousand planets wheel through space ; 
the sun, the moon, the earth and the stars have orbs 
marked out, they turn neither to the right nor to 
the left, but roll on in their appointed spheres. 
From our surroundings we can learn something 
every day. To get ideas of order, sit at the feet of 
nature. 1 lie under the shade of the oak, I look at 
its trunk, its branches, and its roots, that have crept 
and fastened their claws in the earth. I rise up and 
say, "1 woald like to see an organization among 
the miners, an imitation of the oak, its roots fastened 
in their hearts, its stem growing up in their midst, 



ORGANIZATIOK. 13 

and its great, long branches reaching out and shel- 
tering the miners of the United States.'^ 

I go up to the foot of the mountain, and from 
under the rock I discern a little stream gurgling 
and running down the hill. I see a little boy try- 
ing, and failing, to float a toy ship, and I say to 
myself: '' That little stream is too weak and of no 
use.'^ But I follow it down, and after a while I see 
another little stream join, together they murmur 
onward around the pebbles and rocks ; in a little 
while I see another, and so on, until I find the 
small streams of the mountain have joined to form 
the majestic river of the valley, bearing upon its 
bosom the laden ships of commerce. I paused and 
said to myself: " Thus I would like to see the min- 
ers of the United States organized. I would have 
every pit oozing out a little stream of support and 
power, one here, one there, and I would join these 
little streams into a grand river of power, that 
would move onward the mining population of this 
country into the harbor of intelligence and pros- 
perity. 

One little stream is too weak ; one pit alone can do 
nothing — put that dow^n as a very expensive truth, 
settled by the bitter experience of the past. Ask 
me what has led armies to victory, what has efiected 
the greatest reforms, and I will answer, " oro;aniza- 
tion.'^ Ask me what will elevate the condition of 
the masses and lift up the miners of the United 
States, and I answer, " organization and that alone." 



14 ORGANIZATION. 

But tlie question was, is and always will be, liow 
can men be organized? Unions have risen and 
fallen ; like meteors, that flasli for tlie moment, tliey 
have appeared and disappeared. Something wrong 
somewhere. Some pin left out that should have 
been put in. When I turn to the past I feel dis- 
couraged. All along the rugged road are the bro- 
ken emblems of Unions, and the wrecks of leaders 
and labor champions. There is nothing to encour- 
age us from the rear; we must look ahead for hope. 
The bad condition in which the miners live, and the 
woY&e condition into which they are surely drifting, 
are matters of serious import. I do not wish to 
discourage you, but I ought to be frank and plain 
spoken. As long as miners neglect or refuse to 
join and support an organization, so long will they 
struggle to rise in vain. As long as the miner 
v^ould rather toss a dollar over the counter of a 
saloon than into the treasury of an organization, 
iust so lono' will the black and mutterino^ clouds 
hang over his destiny. As long as the miners of 
the United States continue blind to the clearest 
paths of interest, as long as they will not see that a 
dollar invested in a safe organization will pay a two- 
fold interest to them in wages and influence, just so 
long will they fail to build an organization that can 
do them any permanent good. 

You must have money to accomplish anything in 
this age, and I don't care what kind of government 
p?.^etends to rule, whether a republic or a monarchy, 



ORGANIZATION. 15 

money is a power, always was and always will be. 
AYliat can it not do ? It can bribe legislatures, buy 
congressmen, and influence presidents. More than 
this : gold has stolen quietly into the ranks of labor, 
has bought workingmeli to create dissention, andby 
its jingle has turned the truest leader into the black- 
est traitor. If we expect to ever build a powerful 
organization, we must freely contribute a ;pro rata 
share of money for its support. 

The Holy Scriptures say : '' For where your treas- 
ure is, there will your heart be also;" no plainer 
truth than that was ever uttered, and if I should 
ever attempt to build an organization, I would make 
that verse its corner stone. I would make the ini- 
tiation fee not less than five dollars, and the month- 
ly dues not less than one dollar; bind the treasure 
with heavy bonds ; get the association chartered by 
the state or by congress ; I would have every man 
to stand his own, no begging, no helping one 
another, but every one to help himself; that is to 
say, if a member has receipts to show that he has 
paid fifty dollars into the treasury, I would pay him 
in weekly installments that amount back, nothing 
more, nothing less. I would abolish strikes for five 
years, give amicable methods a fair trial, settle all 
disputes by arbitration, conciliation, or by juries; in 
the meantime, organize ; at the end of five years, 
take a ballot, and if amicable methods have not 
proved satisfactory to either parties, fall back on 
strikes and lockouts ; then bring the five year old 



16 ORGANIZATION. 

organization with its one hundred thousand dollars 
for every section, to the support of the miners; 
attack the extortionate '' phicl^ me," and the unjust 
screen system, reduce the hours of labor, and with 
one supreme move and blow, establish in a degree 
that long sought for justice, which is indispensa- 
ble to the health of industry, the security of prop- 
erty and the contentment of life. 

But I fear the miners could not wait for me. 
They are like children with toj^s, they grasp every- 
thing in a hurry. While anything is new, it is 
expected to acoomplish wonders, but once the gloss 
is lost, once a splinter is knocked oft* by the hammer 
of experience, the remaining partSj however valua- 
ble, are cast away as worthless. 

FUND. 

We must have a fund, and a fund in which 
every miner is interested. I don't care how many 
iron-clad oaths a man takes, how many constitutions 
and by-laws there are, or how much he can rant for 
a strike; a ten-dollar note in the. treasury from each 
member, is worth all. We want so much of the 
heart there — we must have the money. Human 
nature — a decided majority of it — is selfish, and 
there is no use in trying to wdiitewash the fact. 
Give me an hundred miners, each with twenty-five 
dollars in the treasury of the Lodge, and they will 
always be present to watch their money. Mark 
that down. They won't come to Avatch ten cents. 



FUND. l7 

Mark tliat down also. An organization must have 
a fund, the members must have an interest there, 
and vastly more than they have in a saloon or a deck 
of cards. The fact of having such a fund wonld dis- 
courage any attempt on the part of the operators to 
impose upon you. 

You may say that all this looks well on paper, is 
pretty to the imagination, but can never be accom- 
plished. Yes, sir, it can ; and I tell you that a fund 
of this kind is the only scheme that can make the 
miners of the United States successful and prosper- 
ous. IvToAV, I hope that you don't think that all this 
money would go into unsafe hands. I would 
have every cent secured ; I would refuse to pay a 
dime, unless I felt and knew that everything is as 
secure as it is possible for human lavv^s to make it. 
So many men have been trusted, and turned out 
rascals and absconders, that confidence in the hon- 
esty of treasurers is at a low ebb. 

The laboring population of this country is an hete- 
roo'eneous cono^lomeration of individuals. Their 
jealousies and suspicions are sensitive, and easily 
aroused. A shrewd and unscrupulous capitalist can 
divide them into three antagonistic parts, politics, 
nationality and religion. Miners should be fore- 
warned on these points. They have nothing to do 
Avith the bread and butter, the comforts an 1 hopes of 
the family; and the man, whether miner or operator, 
that would attempt to divide you on these subects, 
should be peremptorily hooted, hissed and put out. 
3 



18 FUND. 

There is a secure and business way of doing 
everything. The treasurer of each pit would have 
to give bonds equal to double the amount of money, 
and every mine should have at least two thousand 
dollars ready for any emergency. Suppose a pit 
has one hundred men, this would make it twenty 
dollars per capita, a year. This may seem severe, 
but not quite so severe as the conditions which are 
slowly but surely creeping and pressing around you. 
What does ten cents per month amount to? To 
nothing — not sufficient to suggest a treasurer's 
report. 

I am giving my views, I am mapping out the 
plans, and if you don't go to work with a will to 
execute them, or something similar, I want you to 
remember my words, and at the close of any unsuc- 
cessful strike that may break your ranks in the 
future, then I want all of you to think of the $100,- 
000 fand that I am ardently pleading for. I want 
an organization that will be loved by the miners 
and respected by the operators. I want the organ- 
ization to be a respector of reason and a defender ot 
justice. I want her to be the grand lifter and 
equalizer of wages all over this country. To boost 
the wages in one section alone is unjust, both to our- 
selves and to our operator. The price of labor 
should rise and fall at the same time everywhere. 
To allow one operator to keep a " pluck me," when 
the next is humane enough to run his mine without 
one, is unfair and unjust. Injustice is contagious, 



PUND. 19 

and the unjust burden the just ; abolish all the com- 
pay-y stores at or about the same time, an.l the 
movement is fair. Demand regular weekly pay- 
ment in the Kanawaha, as well as on the Monon- 
gahela ; on all the state likewise, and I fail to see 
any reason for the operators to object. So with the 
screen system, or with any other system that is a 
palpable injustice to the workingman. 

BUSINESS COMBINATIONS. 

Aside from protecting labor from the encroach- 
ments of capital, an organization becomes necessary 
to protect the workingman from the impositions of 
what I may term ''business associations.'^ One of the 
cliaracteristics of the age is its manifold and multi- 
fold combinations. From the boot-black yelling on 
the street, to the banker scheming in the parlor, all 
have their organizations. These organizations are 
pulling at the public dug, which, of course, means 
the dug of labor. 

These associations are powers, and, like all other 
powers, they can be used for two purposes; for good 
or evil. They can be prostituted to the basest 
schemes and utilized for the noblest work. I will 
not e ay that these business associations are purely 
bad or purely good. They are formed to make 
money. They charge a shaving more for the neces- 
saries of life than they should, and to get even with 
them the workingmen must form associations to 



20 BUSINESS COMBINATIONS. 

charge a shaving more for their labor. Railroads 
combine to charge yon and me more than they 
shonld for transportation ; the workingmen shonld 
get even with the railroad com]:anies5 by charging 
more for their labor. If they do not, they will be 
snrely fleeced. Everybody is plucking at labor. 
All around you are associations. You can't price a 
piece of beef, a yard of calico, a chair in a factory, 
or a barrel of flour in your store, but what has pass- 
ed under the selfish eye of some association. They 
nibble at your wages when you don't know it. 
They pilfer a cent here 'on the sugar, a cent there on 
the tea, a quarter on the shoes, a dollar on the 
clothes — hence at the end of the year, the poor 
man's treasury is as empty as it w^as on the first of 
January. 

In view of the fact, then, that these associations 
are draining their earnings, would it not be sensible 
on the part of the workingmen to associate to try 
to get a little more for their labor ? 

The idea that we cannot organize v/ithout taking 
an iron-clad oath is an erroneous idea. Get the 
almighty dollars together and you will find that 
they can infuse more sticking elements per square 
inch into human nature than ail the oaths and the 
most solemn and impressive ceremonies that ingenui- 
ty can invent. The idea that an organization must be 
secret is another erroneous idea. Arivthino: that is 
good, will not blush in the light of day, and every- 
thing bad is always out of order. Perhaps the only 



BUSINESS COMBIKATIONS. 21 

reason for secret labor societies, is the blacklisting' 
of Speakers by the capitalists. 

FREE SPEECH, 

And here I come to the rigb ?" of speech^ one of 
the inalienable rights of xVmerican citizens. Every 
pei'son should have his say, the rich and the poor 
alike, and no one should be gairged. Every class of 
men should be free to meet and discuss legitimate 
rights. And for any individual to attempt to 
abridge the rights of man in a free country, is to 
try to make a farce and a failure of our boasted 
institutions. 

The miners have no sympathy with rowdyism. 
They are peaceable, industrious citizens. Because 
one man in a thousand is rash, that is no reason 
for calling the rest murderers and incendiaries. A 
banker seduces and steals another man's wife, runs 
away with other people's money, yet because one 
banker in every hundred is a rascal, that is no rea- 
son why I should call the other ninety-nine thieves 
and villians. It would be unfair for me to lay the 
guilt of one at the door of all, and it is very unjust 
for a capitalist to spread the guilt of one over the 
innocent heads of a thousand. 

The capitalist that ^\ ould spot and blacklist a 
man for speaking his honest convictions, is a more 
dangerous man to the peace of society, than the 
darkest ruffian. Why? Because he is fastening 



22 FBEE SPEECH. 

the safety valve of public opinion. As long as 
every thought is encouraged to come out into broad 
day light, there can be no complaint, but tie the 
tongue, and you at once beget and nurse within 
men passions that mil inevitably disturb society. 

The Constitution of the United States, the Com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania, and the very spirit of 
our free institutions guarantee to all the liberty of 
legitimate speech and action. And yet from all 
parts of the country there arise complaints that 
individual capitalists, virtually deny their working- 
men the freedom of speech. Even among the hills 
of this grand Commonwealth, where liberty of 
speech should be as free as the winds that roam and 
rush at will, industrious, sober and intelligent min- 
ers have been discharged and blacklisted for express- 
ing their thoughts to their fellow-men. 

What inducement is there for us to read and 
reflect when we are not allowed the pleasure of tell- 
ing what we know? What could I do for my fel- 
low-man; what could I do for myself, if I were afraid 
to speak ? Nothing for my neighbor, nothing for 
mvself, but would be as the dumb beast of burden, 
that is satisfied with only something to eat and some 
place to sleep. 

The right of speech is worth everything, and I 
record my feeble, but solemn protest against any 
capitalist trying to gag any laborer, however poor 
or i2:norant he may be. I don't care where a n aa 
hails from, whether from Africa, from Asia or from 



FREE SPEECH. 23 

Europe , wlietlier you arc a Protestant, a Catholic, 
a MetliocIIst, a lleatlien or an Infidel ; what your 
politics are I don't care, but I want you all to have 
a chance to waggle your tongues and tell openly 
what you think is best. 

Talks are telegrams from the brain, the tongue is 
the instrument, the nerves are the wires, and the 
mind is the operator. These are appliances which 
the Creator in His wisdom has given for the use and 
pleasure of men, and the capitalist that assumes 
to abridge the inherent rights of his employee, 
trifles with the power of the Creator, and the sacred 
rights of man. Give workingmen everywhere the 
freedom to meet and discuss the questions which 
concern the comfort and elevation of home, and the 
cause of secret labor societies is at once removed. 
I am not defending insolent and insulting language, 
I plead for the recovery of trampled rights. I plead 
for the miners the privilege to meet openly at the 
pit-mouth, I plead for the most ignorant and the 
most intelligent alike, and I plead for an unintimi- 
dated freedom of speech to the workingman, to the 
husband and father, who would lift up his head 
above the humble crowd, to express convictions that 
deeply concern the welfare of his family. 

COMPANY STORES. 

Leaving the right of speech, \ve will next treat of 
the right of labor to be welt paid, to be often paid. 



24 COMPAXY STORES. 

and to be paid in the cnrrent nioney of the land. 
And we cannot say very nmeh npon this snhject 
withont colliding with the company store, otlierwise 
notoriously known in this section as the ''pluck 
ujc.'' Let us proceed at once to dissect and lay 
open the intentions and operations of this infam- 
ous system. 

There are two kinds of company stores, one I call 
the voluntary, and the other the forced. I call that 
the forced when the miner has one of the two things 
to do, either he has to buy in the '' pluck me," or 
he can't get work. In this way the operator takes 
advcin:age of the poverty of the miner. The ^ idea 
of a '' pluck me*^ vras conceived in a narrow mind 
and hatched in a selfish heart. The intention was 
and is to make money in the most unfair manner. I 
object to kicking a man on the floor, and I object 
to any capitalist taking .advantage of the depen- 
dency of a family, in order to glut greedy desires. 

A miner comes up to the '^ boss" to ask for a 
"job." The "boss" answers, "Smith, I will let 
you have work on condition, namely, that you will 
stand to be plucked by the company store." Smith 
pauses for a moment, thinks of his bare home, his 
children and wife in need, no money; darkness 
every^vhere, "pluck me" on the one hand, starva- 
tion on tlie other, and between the two there is not 
a parti'v'le of liberty. Smith, moved by the pressure 
Oi' want, and by the holiest feelings of a father, takes 
the work under the " pluck me" condition ; then 



COMPANY STORES. 25 

rents a company liouso, and now a miner and a cit- 
izen of a great, free country, has virtually become 
the servant of a master, and perhaps the menial of a 
despot. 

His earnings are absorbed. Pay after pay comes, 
but no pay for Smith. If he strikes for higher 
wages the company store is slammed in his face, in 
the tace of his wife and children, in order to starve 
him into submission. If he feels like rising up to 
make a plain, honest speech to his fellow miners, 
the fear of ejectment cows him down; the blacklist 
and the victim '' spot'^ are held up before him, and 
for the sake of home and family he dissembles, and 
becomes a cringing hypocrite. This is not right, 
and I again utter my protest against forcing men 
into conditions where they are virtually in the 
hands of another, when the comforts of home, the 
destinies of children, are practically measured and 
shaped by the schemes of selfish and interested 
men. 

Give Smith work if he is industrious and sober. 
Pay him in money. Let him have his wages in his 
fist, break for home, and allow him and wife a 
chance to go anywhere to buy the best for the least 
money. It is nobody's business where and what 
for a workingman spends his earnings; none in the 
least. 

There is at best only about one happy day in a 
month for the workingman. That is pay-day. But 
this day becomes the bluest and the blackest of all 
4 



26 COMPANY STORES. 

when the " pluck me" has been busy during the 
month at his wages. Think of a man working liarcl 
every day in the month, in water and bad air, amid 
danger and darkness, yet see no money from one 
month to the other. What candid, disinterested 
man will declare this "pluck me" system just? 
Who will say that it is not unjust ? 

Abolish the company stores. I want the twenty- 
five per cent, tribute the miners pay on their neces- 
saries, to go to the family treasury, if only to buy 
some school books for the children, or a fev/ plain 
pictures to adorn the apartment of home. Let us 
patronize some enterprising and just business man 
in the neighborhood. I urge the policy of an exten- 
sive and an equitable distribution as possible, of the 
profits from our rich resources, and I object to 
allowing one and the same person, or firm, to 
manipulate and monopolize both the profits from 
what we produce, and the earnings of our labor, 
as a policy calculated to impoverish the masses, and 
create dangerous financial and social inequalities 
among the people. 

I believe in putting and leaving every man on his 
own merits. I don't believe in giving the company 
store-keepers a better chance to live and make 
money than anybody else. We owe no gratitude to 
that extortionist. Give him the same chance as any 
other store-keeper — no better — don't allow injustice 
of a "^^boss" and the rapacity of the store-keeper to 
lean against one another to pilfer your earnings. 



COMPANY STORES. , 27 

Don't feed the forges that turn out the chains that 
\^^11 fasten you down to the helpless conditions of 
poverty. 

At present the government of Pennsylvania, and 
the government of the United States are against us, 
but I wish to remind the miners of this country that 
we can go to work and esUiblish a little government 
ot our own 'that can effectually put these " pluck 
mes" down, without interfering with the State or 
the National constitution and laws. We can insert 
a smaller mill within larger to grind out justice for 
us. The governor of this State recently vetoed the 
'' store order bill." He had a legal, but, I think, 
not a moral right to do this. But let that pass. 
We can enact a " pluck me'' abolition law without 
him, jump over his veto, and abolish these stores 
ourselves. 

Let us drive the entering wedge into this " pluck 
me" log, w^hose rotten heart is the lurking place of 
a^ scheme that has stealthily stripped the miner's 
home of its ornaments, made bare the floor, and 
nude the wall, and curtailed the life comforts of the 
miner's family. Let us do this by making a gen- 
eral demand for weekly pays, and when we get that 
let us desist from patronizing the ravenous " pluck 
me." This is the way to put dow^n the company 
stores, w^i'hout the consent of the governor of 
Pennsylvania, or of the president of the L^nited 
States. . 

But while we are paid monthly w^e can't do 



28 COMPANY STORES. 

tliis. To allow the " pluck me" to have a quiet and 
uninterrupted possession of our earnings for thirty 
days, is to throw away our only means of defence. 
At the end of the month there will be nothing left 
for '' mother," with which to buy elsewhere. Ifext 
month the same. And thus the chain of poverty 
becomes endless. 

WEEKLY PAYS. 

Weekly pays would keep the family treasury sup- 
plied, and I should judge that a little cash in the 
purse of a good wife is about the best investment 
a poor man can have. She can make cash go one- 
third further than credit. Fierce competition in 
town stores compels the most and best to be sold for 
the least. But the '' pluck me" will continue to 
pluck twenty-five per cent, more for everythinu". 
though there be a thousand stores around selling 
for twenty-five per cent. less. The clashes of trade 
have no effect on the company store. The miner can- 
not help himself — he has no money to go elsewhere 
— -hence must stand the fleecing. 

Enterprise also favors cash. Many articles of food 
come to the door at twenty-five per cent, less, but 
the victim of the ''pluck me" is helpless. The tri- 
als of some are the triumphs of others. Sheriff 
sales often occur. Many articles that are nece ssary 
for the comfort and beauty of home, can be bought 
at half price. Bargains are the rule. But what is 



WEEKLY PAYS. 29 

the use? The wife of the miner has no cash. 
"Where is it ? Didn't her husband work last month? 
Oh, yes ! hard every day, Avent in before the mules in 
the morning, came out after the mules in the even- 
ing ; but when pay day came, there was little or no 
pay left by the company store. Hence the wife has 
no money, the bargains lost, and with them perhaps 
five or ten dollars lost to the family. 

Now suppose pay comes every week. The good 
wife would have gone to town. She would have 
been at the sale and brought home with her ten dol- 
lars' worth of things for five ; five dollars saved for 
home, five dollars saved for the family, and five 
dollars' worth of labor to lighten the miner's toils. 

Then a little cash at home makes the " old man" 
feel independent. Cheer glows on the face of 
" mother" when she is conscious of a little stowed 
away in some corner ready for the chances of to-day 
or the rains of to-morrow. But when the ''pluck 
me" runs the purse-strings of home, the old folks are 
gloomy, many a little comfort is denied, and the 
aspirations of youth are chilled and blasted by the 
poverty and dependence that the company store has 
slowly brought upon the families of the poor. 

Demand weekly pays, free stores, and free speech. 
Impositions that are tolerable in prosperity, grind, 
pinch, bleed and become intolerable in adversity. 
Let us not slumber during the day. The hard times 
will come again. '' The pillar of cloud by day and 
fire by night," will not forever remain over the 



30 WEEKLY PAYS. 

industries of our country. While the good times 
last it is to the interest of the operator as well as the 
miner to establish justice. It will sweeten the bur- 
dens of the present, and temper the madness of the 
future. 

There are too many cunning schemes rifling the 
pockets of the poor, and too many shrewdly gotten 
up systems draining the energies of industry. 
While these are allowed to quietly draw and con- 
duct an unreasonable proportion of the profits intd 
the pockets of a few, the many, or the people ai 
large, are losing, and the laboring masses are stead-* 
ily drifting into conditions of poverty, ignorance and 
servility. There are social tendencies busily al 
work degrading the masses. Home is being strip-^ 
ped of its ornaments, the table shorn of the meats 
and fruits that a rich and free country could spar^ 
for all. Parents are obliged to rear up their chil- 
dren in the mine and factory ; and exhausting them 
by premature labor, their mental and physical pow- 
ers neglected and dwarfed ; the poor man's boy is 
growing up to become an irresponsible citizen, and 
the poor man's girl to become the mother of debility 
and mediocrity. Let us securely brace ourselves 
against these illegal and- dangerous tendencies. 

SCREENS. 

And next the screen imposition. I cannot imag- 
ine what the miners were doing when the operators 



SCREENS. 31 

were introducing the present sj^stem of weighing 
the coal. Were they bhncl to the " true inward- 
ness'^ of this imposition, or were they powerless to 
defend themselves ? 

An ingenious system is more profitable to the 
operator than a low wage. That is to say, if he can 
ostensibly pay you a high wage, and by a cunning 
device, whose workings are not clearly seen nor 
directly felt, he can realize more profit, more than 
he could by a direct and open process, he has the 
advantage, about the same as the robber has over 
a drugged man. There are many schemes at work 
to-day, whose success depends on their indirect and 
secret operations. Were the company to call at 
your door on the last day of December, to extort 
from you in a sum what it has extorted from you 
quietly and by degrees during the year, you would 
not tolerate that institution another day. But 
because the ^' pluck me" bleeds ygu slowly, you per- 
mit and support it handsomely. Just so with the 
present system of weighing the coal. We don't 
know how much we are bled by its operations. We 
have an idea that a leech is fast to our earnings, and 
perhaps we imagine that it is drawing more than it 
is, because we don't exactly knov/ how much it does 
draw. 

Indirect methods are more or less deceitful. The 
workingman should insist on having everything 
plain, simple and direct. A low price is straight- 
forward, it shows what it is on its face, but a hio^h 



32 SCREENS. 

price over a cunning scheme is a blind and a snare. 
Be suspicious about a change in the method of 
ascertaining the amount of your labor. The miners 
are too much infatuated with high figures. They 
should first go to work to cut those little pipes that 
are hidden to secretly sap their earnings. What 
benefit is a good wage when some ingenious system 
returns about one-half of it into the hands of the 
capitalist? ' The public is deluded, people look upon 
the surface ; they have not time to study the mys- 
teries and the wily workings of a certain industry. 

The principal objection to the present screen is 
the width between the bars, which is one and a half 
inches. Of course the ''boss," in addition to this 
very frank manner of reducing the weight, will tax 
his ingenuity to have the screen constructed as to 
its size, shape and slant to give the miner's coal a 
" good shaking up," in order to send through the 
bars as much nut ^coal as possible. The more the 
better for the operator, as the miner is not credited 
with a nut of this merchantable coal. 

Is'or is this the extent of their ingenuity. You 
all know with wdiat certainty a thing is broken 
by a tumble or a fall down stairs. Not satisfied 
with a " good shaking up" of the coal, a few of the 
operators have their screens divided stair-like, so 
that the heavy lumps, in falling from one step to thu 
other, might be more completely bruised, the corners 
knocked off*, and the knocked-off* corners, of course, 
are expected to run through the screen into the nut 



SCREENS. 83 

coal boat. And besides the steps, tbe bars of eacb 
succeeding division are so arranged that tliey are 
not in line, but sufficiently in line, however, to 
eftectively catch any stray '^chip" that may le dis- 
posed to follow a larger '' chip" into the digger's 
l)an. 

These screens, so far as I know, are used by only 
a few, but their use by a few may force others to 
adopt them for self-protection. The unprincipled 
among the operators, sometimes force the just and 
the mamanimous to resort to means that are 
neither sought nor approved of by reasonable capi- 
talists. The operators pay, for instance, the three 
cents and a half per bushel, but put the screen to 
subtract one cent, and really the miner would be bet- 
ter paid at two and one-half cents with slack, nut 
and lump coal weighed than he can be with only 
the lump coal credited. 

Now it seems to me the miner ought to have 
a share of the profits from all the merchantable coal 
he mines. A bushel of nut coal costs as much labor 
to the miner as a bushel of lump, it is also a source 
of profit to the operator, perhaps at present a richer 
source than the lump coal. And, be the profit 
great or small, a portion is due to the miner, and a 
sense of justice, if nothing else, should prompt the 
master to hand over what of right belongs to the 
servant. 

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has endeav- 
ored to check this screen extortion. The law, 
5 



34 SCREENS. 

which, created the legal right for the miners to 
employ and keep a check- weighman on every tip- 
ple, has made it obligatory on him " to see that the 
miners are correctly credited with all merchantable 
coal mined by them." But this law, like many oth- 
ers that have been passed only to silence the clam- 
ors of the dissatisfied, is totally defective. Human 
laws are, at best, very imperfect, but the imperrec- 
tion of this law is sufficient to create a dou'ot con- 
cerning the sincerity of the legislature that enacted 
it. I can see neither humanity nor justice in pass- 
ing laws to protect workingmen, accompanied with 
embarrassing provisos, destroying their very inten- 
tion, and with no penalties to enforce their execu- 
tion. 

But the existence or non-existence of a statute 
law does not alter the just obligations which are 
morally binding on reasonable beings. Our social 
system would indeed be hopelessly depraved, were 
each citizen to do his duty to his neighbor only from 
the fear of the law and its penalties. Without any 
statute law, the miner has the right to see his coal 
justly weighed, as much so as any person has to see 
his sugar weighed in a provision store. And the 
fact that the commonwealth has been obliged to 
enact laws to enforce this natural right, proves that 
some of the coal men have not uniformly respected 
the natural rights of the miners The fact of the 
commonwealth commanding the check-weighman 
to see that the miner is correctly credited with all 



SCREENS. 35 

the coal mined by him, tends to create a suspicion 
that at some time the miner has been incorrectly 
credited. 

Without any statute law, the ininer has a right to 
be paid for the nut coal, but the operators disregard 
this right and tramp it under their feet with inpun- 
ity. The legislature now enjoins them, but they 
continue in their extortion as though there were 
neither a God nor a lecj^islature in existence. We 
have some of them ferociously refusing to allow a 
check-weighman on the tipple, and most of them 
persistently refusing to pay the miners for nut coal. 
Who is to rule ? Pennsylvania, for her working 
people, the blood and sinews of her strength and 
greatness, or private corporations in the inter- 
est of a few ? It look« as though the few are to 
reign. Eight in the face of our spread eagled free 
institutions, our boasted liberties, our almost uni- 
versal franchise, our trumpeted equal rights prin- 
ciple, we see rising in spite of every protest, an 
aristocracy as much more formidable than the lords 
of Europe, as the wealth and resources of America 
eclipse those of the old world. What is rear- 
ing this portentious aristocracy ? Answer : the 
division of the working people at the polls. What 
can resist and bridle this menancing aristocracy? 
I answer: the union of workingmen at the polls. 

Could we be knit together as close as our inter- 
ests and destinies are, we could soon have laws to 
abolish or amend the present svstem of wei^hino- 



36 SCREENS. 

coal, and also to abolish the company stores. But 
we can expect neither the attention of tiie public, i:or 
the assistance of the legislatures until v\ e show a 
determination to get and keep solidly united. 
"While we are scattered, we are the tools of every 
faction, and the pets of none. 

Eedress must come, either through additional 
State legislation, or through an Inter-State union. 
There are difhculties in the way of State legislation. 
These systems have fastened their claws, and are 
gorging themselves upon the meat and bread of the 
mining population of so many sections, that for one 
State alone to wrest her miners from their clutches, 
would be to ostracise its own trade by driving it to 
the other States, where the operators still have the 
advantage of these mijust and heartless means oi 
extortion. To ask or to force the Pitisburgh oper- 
ators to pay for mining the nut coal, while the 
operators of the Hocking valley are permitted to 
have the same free, would be nciiher politic nor 
just. Just so with the Monongahela and Kanawlui 
valleys. 

The miners of these sections produce for the same 
markets, and any material diflerence in the system 
or price of labor in one section must materially 
affect the interests of the other. Hence the neces- 
sity of general legislation to remove general griev- 
ances. Either Congress must interfere, or the 
States harrassed by the present screen system must 
concert to enact laws abolishino; or amendins: the 



SCREENS. 37 

system, at or about the same time. Workin2:men can 
expect very little attention from Congress until they 
are combined and bound together by cords that 
cannot be continually parted or broken by the 
appeals and sophistry of politicians. We must 
turn toward the States, and even the legisla- 
tures may be a little tardy unless the miners have 
an organization to goad the politicians to work. 

Now, miners are not all " angels." We liave a 
sprinkling of evil spirits among us. If the coal was 
measured, some might be tempted to learn the art 
of filling loose wagons, and a few might learn hovv^ 
to build arches. The dishonest would fare better 
than the honest, and no workingman should tolei\itc 
any system that tends to make dishonesty profitable, 
and that affords the lazy or the unskilful the cliance 
to get by tricks the same as the industrious and 
sidlful can get by hard work. 

The credit of one is interwoven with the credit of 
a class and a stain affects the reputation of many. 
The miners should exact justice from all, witliout 
regard to personal, social, or industrial ties. Some 
miners are negligent. This gives the operators an 
opportunity to magnify in order to create unfavora- 
ble impressions. The rascality of an individual h*is 
often sullied the good name of a community, and 
closed many a generous hand against the appeals of 
charity. 

The operators claim that they put on the lumj) 
sufficient to pay for the nut coal. This could b 



>c 



38 SCREENS. 

done, but it is questionable whether it is or has been 
done. The fact of the operators persistently refus- 
ing to pay the miners directly what they claim to 
pay indirectly, whispers some advantage hidden in 
the workings of the present method. The miners 
should insist on having every transaction open and 
direct. When we see a lair we suspect a fox is 
near, and when we discover men clinging to a sys- 
tem that is not straighforward, we are apt to suspect 
that system. These bits of nut coal are chips from 
the miner's hardest toil, and if the operators had to 
strike a stroke of the pick for every nut that passes 
through the bars unrequited, aching arms and tired 
limbs would prompt a resolution to justly pay the 
miners for this highly merchantable coal. 

The objection on the part of the coal men to base a 
mining scale on the price of iron, is partly applicable 
to a coal scale, based on the price of lump only. If 
both lump and nut coal are sources of profit to the 
operator, they should likewise be to the miner, 
Admitting that the price of mining should be regu- 
lated by the price of the merchantable coal, yet the 
miners should insist that the price of mining shall 
be based on the entire merchantable product, and 
not on one kind only. 

A change would be profitable to the owners of 
coal. Many a miner, especially when cars are 
scarce, throws a vast amount of valuable coal into 
the ^'gob,'' and what should be a source of wealth 
to miner and operator, io lost to both because of the 
injurious operation of a large screen. 



SCREENS. 89 

Miners are not conversant with the arts of chican- 
ery. They learn by experience rather than by 
reason. They feel when they are pinched, though 
they may not clearly see the pincher* Their com- 
plaints are, in a majority of cases, the natural con- 
sequences of severe grievances. Because they never 
had a chance to go to college, or through some high 
school, where the mind can be sharpened to detect 
at a glance the ''true inwardness," and future-reach- 
ing results of ingenious systems, that is no reason 
why they should be imposed upon by the more 
artful. 

Every good citizen performs an hundred duties 
every day that no law enjoins. No law can compel 
me to stretch out my hand to help the drunkard from 
the ditch, or succor the distressed and the unfortu- 
nate. There is no law on the statute books that pre- 
tends to command miners to throw a bucket of cold 
water on the burning house of some capitalist, and 
yet, notwithstanding all indifferent and unjust treat- 
ment, they would be the first to bnttle the flames for 
the very operator that wont turn hiy hand for them 
without legal compulsion. There is not, at pres- 
ent, sufficient law to abolish this evil system, but this 
fact will not deter the good from endeavoring to at 
least approximately restore the just relations which 
should exist between employer and employee. 

While either party feels aggrieved there can be 
no contentment. A restless and relentless feeling 
characterizes every transaction. Industi'ial strifes 



40 SCREENS. 

are prolific sources of injury to both operative and 
operator. They blunt enterprise, and beget care- 
less habits. Strikes benefit neither, but injure 
both. They do not determine anything, but un- 
settle everything. And yet it appears that we 
are not in conditions that can abolish strikes. On 
the contrary, we seem to mingle in some element 
highly congenial to them. And while we live in 
this, insalubrious mental climate, where murkv 
clouds hang still, and sullen storms are frequent, 
and until we , can remove ourselves to serener, 
calmer regions, we must adopt means most suitable 
to present conditions. 

"We should not supinely submit to injustice. It is 
our duty to resist it. The mode of defence and 
resistance is worth serious consideration. It must 
be either the mental or the physical. The physical 
is attended with pain, the mental with pleasure; 
but which can do the most in the way of putting 
down extortion is a question yet to be determined 
by experiment. The mental has never been fairly 
tested. If a court of adjudication could be estab- 
lished sufficiently comprehensive to bring within its 
jurisdiction all the afiected coal districts, with a fair 
trial, the miners could expect an unqualified verdict 
against the screen system. But the consummation 
of such a grand and beneficent scheme is improb- 
able. 

Then, if in the present condition of society, strikes 
and lockouts are unavoidable, it becomes advisable 



SCREENS. 41 

for workingmen to organize and execute their plans 
on thorough business principles. The dealings of 
the present social system are partial to a few, and 
unjust to the masses. The class that works the 
hardest fares the worst, and the class that works 
the least fares the best. . Some power must and will 
be had to eliminate what is injurious and unjust 
to the common people. The capitalist could do 
this; they have tact, influence and wealth. But 
what if they will not? Are the causes of the 
gradual impoverishment of the masses and con- 
sequently of dangerous financial inequalities, to 
be destroyed by the ballot while they may, or by 
force and violence when they must ? The last is a 
serious, but an inevitable alternative. There can 
be no continued contentment nor guaranteed pub- 
lic ' security, while the present tendencies are 
impoverishing the masses. Panics and depression 
will recur; agitation is always on the alert 
for grievances, and watching for an opportunity 
to fan the stifled embers into a flame. And 
although agitation, like a candle, burns only for 
an hour, flickers and goes out in smoke, yet 
while it does burn, it scatters cheers and hurrahs 
among men that sometimes impel them dashingly 
on to success ; at other times it dies out before the 
point is gained, to the utter disgust of the followers, 
and defeat of the leaders. But, at ail times, agita- 
tion can create a vast amount of inconvenience and 
anxiety in the industrial world. 

6 



42 SCREENS. 

And I maintain that agitation has as many claims 
on respectability as argumentation. They are two 
branches of oratory ; the province of one is to con- 
vince, the other to move, and there is as much 
divinity in urging a man to do right as there is in 
convincing and then leaving him to his cold, cheer- 
less surroundings. Only when agitation precedes 
argument it is mischievous. 

AVhen moving against the screen, some miners 
favor the using of forks, having the width between 
the prongs the same as between the bars of the 
screen, to fill the coal, in order to leave all the nut 
in the pit, and send out only such coal as would run 
over the bars into the weigh pan. To see men some 
morning thus armed with torks against this screen 
oppression would be a novel and an impressive 
sight. Of course the operators would immediately 
lock out, and the shouldering of a fork w^ould be a 
virtual declaration of a strike. 

->Thei? would come the necessity for an union. 
Without union there can be no strength, and with- 
out stre?^gi;h we are helpless. We must have an 
National association to crush or cure injurious 
systems. But workingmen should not try to test 
an organizaiion before it has bloomed its first blos- 
soms. Let thiTS germ have time to take root and 
o-row up into str^^2:th and influence. TTnrr}^ hf^'^? 
killed more trades unions than all other causes 
combined, and impatience has frequently precipi- 
tated unwary men into defeat, and with them saga- 



SCREENS. 43- 

GioiiB and faithful leaders have been dragged into 
humiliation and contempt. Troubles will come 
often enough without going after them, and always 
remember this truth, that the true miners' states- 
man is he who bridles rather than he who spurs on 
an organization into a strike. 

WAGES. 

The question of wages is next in orders And in 
the first place it is very hard to determine the por- 
tion capital and labor each should have. The divis- 
ion of the profits is the point at issue. Find the 
man that can, satisfactorily to both, make an equita- 
ble division, and he will be the man that can settle 
this vexatious and destructive strife between capital 
and labor. 

Here is a capitalist with one hundred thousand 
dollars invested in a coal mine. Here are one hun- 
dred miners investing their skill and strength, and 
risking their lives in the same mine. What are 
they all after? What prompts the operator to 
invest, what the miner to labor? Answer; the 
desire for happiness. 

J Each one has his own way to be happy. Money 
maj^ satisfy the capitalist, fame the statesman, and 
glory the soldier. The philanthropist loves to be 
kind, the Christian to be good, the judge to be just ; 
and the pursuits of happiness are as numerous and 
varied as the- features and forms of men. I have no 



44 WAGES. 

objection to the operator being happy, provided he 
will give his operatives also a chance to become 
happy. I wish all, the poor as well as the rich, to 
have a fair show in life. And that government, or 
that society that does, by its constitution, distribute 
and scatter chances equally among all classes, is the 
best government, and that government or system of 
laws which makes or has made one part happy and 
the other part miserable, is the worst kind of gov- 
ernment, and it matters not what you call it. 

Now, the country in which a man lives has a great 
deal to do with the amount of happiness he enjoys. 
A farmer may grub and till on a barren soil, work 
until the bones in his body ache for rest, and yet 
that farmer cannot expect much happiness. In a 
country where the veins are small, slaty and deep, 
where there is no convenient natural wealth, in a 
country like this, labor cannot look for many of the 
good things of life. » 

^But these thoughts are not applicable to the 
United States. Amid all our troubles don't forget 
the fact that this is the choice country of the earth 
Look at the rich, black soil of the western plains, 
yielding more bread than we could eat, the moun- 
tains covered mth pine to build homes, and filled 
with mammoth veins of excellent coal and iron ore. 
Look at the greater and lesser rivers, the net work 
of railroads passing almost every door, transporting, 
distributing and exchanging the various , products. 
The South supplies the North with sugar and cotton, 



WAGES. 45 

the north returns the iron and coah The west fur- 
nishes bread to the east, the east manufactures the 
clothes and the shoes for the west. This is a ha- )[ )y 
combination of resources, and in a country like ours, 
— ^the richest and freest under the skies, all could 
be happy. Of course there can be no genuhie com- 
plete happiness in this life. There will be a tear 
for every smile, the black veil will always trail the 
ground, and the unfortunate will always wail. But 
Ave can approach the golden fonntain, we can all do 
a little to give every one a chance to live. Fair 
play is all we ask. It is no fair play to take advan- 
tage of ignorance and poverty. Give every man 
his due, what he ought to have, not only what he 
can get. 

JSTow the question springs upon us, are working- 
men, as a rule, happy ? Do*they receive a fair sliare 
of what can make life enjoyable ? If not, then, in a 
land of plenty, there is something wrong in the 
structure of society. And as long as we see one class 
of people living in dingy shanties, and another com- 
pelled to seek the mouldy cellars of the city, just so 
long will we be asking the whys and the wherefores 
of this deplorable condition. There must be some- 
thing wrong. 

One of two causes has eifected this inequality. 
Either the Creator ordained that it should be so, 
or the shrewd and covetous have, through the 
agency of governments, and by means or' a loiig 
continued process of partial legislation, stealtiiiiv 



46 SCREENS. 

appropriated to tliemselves, tlirongli many centuries, 
a very material portion of those means which nature 
has intended and set apart as necessary for the 
proper sustenance and advancement of the laboring 
masses. 

Is it probable that the Creator has ordained a 
large class of human beings to live in misery and 
poverty, and a small class to revel in htippiness and 
luxury? Analogy teaches otherwise. There is 
nothing in nature to hint inequality. The sun 
shines on the high and the low, and the rain Avaters 
the patches of the poor as well as the lawns oi 
the rich. . Everything in nature teaches equality. 
And when I mention equality, do not understand 
me to mean that all are equal in physical and men- 
tal capacities. There are no two of equal skill, or 
of equal endowments. It is impossible to find two 
alike. What I mean is, that all, naturally, have equal 
chances to follow the pursuits of happiness. 

The workiiigman is usually satisfied when ''home, 
sweet home" is bright with carpets, pictures, and 
books, when the children are well fed, clothed and 
educated, and when there are prospects of a little 
stowed away for the infirmities of age. 

Now, if the acquisition of these- comforts will 
make the wage worker happy, and these alone, he 
ought to have a fair and an equal chance with the 
capitalist, to obtain these comforts. And the only 
means the Vorkingmen have for acquiring these are 
the work and skill of their hands. If they are not 



WAGES.' 47 

justly paid for their labor some of these comforts 
must necessarily be abridged, and little by little, 
somehow or other, they have been abridged, until 
the unskilled laborers of this couniry are in condi- 
tions scarcely better than those of the peasants of 
Europe. If the rich agricultural and mineral pro- 
duets of this country do not decently sustain its 
^Yorkingmen, do not give them large and commo- 
dious houses, and ample means to rear up intellgent 
children, there is something quietly at work some- 
where that should not be, and a detective 'should 
at once be dispatched to hunt, and arrest the cause. 

The cause that creates such and so many distur- 
bances in the industrial world, is competition in the 
labor and produce market. It is said that competi- 
tion is the life of trade, and in some respects, it 
might be said that competition is the degrader of 
labor. Trade and labor are quite different. They 
perform two different functions. L^bor produces; 
trade. exchanges. Trade is shrewd, labor unsuspect- 
ing. Traders first stop competition among them- 
selves, then endeavor to incite competition among 
the working people. They generally succeed, and 
while workingmen are fighting among themselves, 
they are in some gilded corner laughing and count- 
ing the spoils. 

Competition in the labor market 1 a^ become ver^^ 
disastrous to the hopes and happiness of the masses. 
It sets the miners of the Monongahela and Kanawha 
valleys against one another, the Shenango against 



48 WAGES. 

tlie Mahoning, the Hocking against the the Pitts- 
burgh, and vice versa. It sets miner against miner, 
mechanic against mechanic, home against home, 
and by its cutting, shaving operations, has brought 
the price of labor down to a figure that will rear a 
generation of ignorant dependents. 

For every room there are five miners, for every 
situation there are three mechanics, for every set of 
books there are ten book-keepers, and for every 
'' wanted" in a daily newspaper there are thirty 
applicants. These are all competing with one 
another. Each one is trying to take the bread out 
of the other's mouth. The labor market is in a con- 
fusion, and the life of the wage worker has almost 
become a scramble for a job. Can't we do some- 
thing to check this rush? Can't we follow up the 
Mle to find out the sources of the floods that have 
inundated our valleys and covered our hills with 
labor ? Can't we take hold of the efiect, run it back 
to it cause or causes and there apply a remedy ? 

Let us try. Here we have on our hands too many 
miners; too many mechanics, and too many wage 
workers of all kinds. This is proven by the fact 
that their labor is not appreciated as it should be. 
Men are discharged for avowing sacred principles, 
belonging to a trade union, and protecting alienable 
rights. Capitalists refuse to give any reason for 
this treatment, as though their men were not crea- 
tures of reason. Why is this? Simply because 
that for every man they *'spot" there are three ready 



WAGES. 49 

to rusli into his place. Do you suppose for a 
moment that the ''boss" would be so ready with the 
black list, if miners were scarce, or even just suffi- 
cient ? Oh, no ! Selfishness, if nothing else, would 
cause him to pause and ponder. Just so in other 
trades. Too many men, too much labor; hence 
cheap, and hence not properly appreciated. What 
is the cause of this? Is it possible that the Creator 
has sent more human beings on this earth than there 
is room or work for ? Has there been a little mis- 
take in the count, or has three been somehow forced 
to fill the place of four. Either there are too many 
men for the work or those that are employed are 
collectively in some way compelled to produce, by 
working too hard duraig too many hours per day, 
Vvitli modern inventions, about one-fourth more than 
their just allotment, thereby not only overtaxing 
their own energies, but also barring from means of 
support about one-fourth of their fellow-workingmen 
that have equal claims on the beneficence of society, 
and the munificence of nature. 

LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

The introduction of labor-saving machinery is 
causing some very serious effects to crop out on the 
surface of society. Every such machine put in oper- 
ation is a Btone cast into the industrial sea. It 
trouhles its waters to its depths, and though it may 
only cause a ripple to sway over the surface, and 

7 



50 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

in a moment all is smooth again, yet remember that 
the stone is down there somewhere, and that it has 
surged the entire sea. 

Now do not hastily conclude that I am opposed 
to labor-saving machinery. Wait until I am 
through. I am stating facts not to be winced at. 
Through all the mazes of superstition, ignorance 
and error, humanity is groping, feeling its way 
across the narrow plain of life. Let us be candid 
with one another. 

The introduction of a labor-saving machine may 
be only a question of gain to the capitalist, but it is 
a question of bread and butter to the man thrown 
out of employment. Here are one hundred men 
worldng in a factory, and an ingenious idea flashes 
across the mind of one of the men. Tie conceives a 
contrivance which will, with only twenty-five men 
do tlie woi'k of one hundred. Art maps out the 
idea on paper; the skill of the mechanic executes 
the plans, and a labor-saving machine is intro- 
duced. 

Now, an inventor has just as much right to 
express his ideas with a machine, as I have to 
express my ideas on this paper. We. can't, and if 
could, we should not try to stO|3 men from thinking. 
We may prevent a man from expressing his 
thoughts. You may gag a speaker, imprison a 
writer, or stifle the new iden^ of the inventor; but 
we have no right to use any such despotic means. 
They are the resorts of despicable monarclis and 
tyrants. 



LABOE-SAVING MACHINERY. 51 

I have heard some very plain threats uttered by 
miners against a coal mining machine. You had 
better let that machine be. A man has just as 
much right to invent and use that device, as you 
have to use your tongue or pen, just as much ; no 
more, no less. And when you talk about demol- 
ishing that engine, you are encouraging the use of 
the very means that the operators are using to 
demolish your organizations. I have neither an 
objection nor one whit of prejudice against a mining 
machine. I would like to see one in every room in 
the United States. I would hail the time when 
every miner will go in at seven in the morning, put 
the machine in position to drill or bear in, turn a 
little wheel to start it, sit down, watch the pick 
slashing away, dig three wagons in three hours, fill 
them in the other three, go home about two, neither 
worn out with work nor aching for rest, but vigor- 
ous and free, eager to cultivate and adorn the sur- 
roundings of home, or to read and reflect during 
the rest of the day. 

That is what a mining machine should do. That 
is what labor-saving machinery can do, and that is 
what it would have done for every branch of indus- 
try were it not for the grasping cupidity of capital 
and the groping stupidity of labor. 

Every machine that was ever constructed should 
have lightened and lessened the hours of labor. It 
has not done so; hence the abundance and cheapness 
of labor: and hence the strifes and strikes of to-dav. 



52 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

Into tlie shops of industry, thousands of machines 
have been introduced within the last fifty years, 
driving away tens of thousands of men to seek work 
in other trades, only to find machinery introduced 
everywhere, and every avenue crowded with labor. 
Too much labor, hence cheap, and hence not appre- 
ciated, but blacklisted and victimized. 

) The complaints and mutterings of the working- 
men are natural. They feel, if they don't reason. 
The mania for trades unions is caused by a feeling 
among the workingmen that somebody or some- 
thing is injuring them, and that somehow they are 
being imposed upon. They feel that the govern- 
ment is too general, too far and too distant to pro- 
tect them ; hence they construct little goverunients 
of their own. They have to blame somebody for 
their troubles, and they put the blame on the capi- 
talists. The capitalists, on the other hand, blame 
the workingmen. The fact of the matter is, that 
the mechanical advancement of the past fifty years 
has dragged both capital and labor into the rapids of 
competition. 

Mechanical reform is ahead of labor reform. 
The ,i republic has excessively taxed, the physical 
energies of her laboring population with too long 
daily hard work, and at the expense of a serious^ if 
not a dangerous, derangement of her industries. 
Machines should not have thrown any man out of 
his work, but simply reduce the burdens and hours 
of that man's' labor. Suppose we construct a 



LABOR-SAVING MACHINEEY. 63 

machine to do the work of one hundred men with 
only twenty-five. You turn away the seventy-live, 
retain the remainder, and compel them to work 
ten hours as before for the same wages. Now what 
good has that machine done to the twenty-five 
retained, and what evil to the seventy-five that have 
been driven away from their regular trade to become 
wanderers, not knowing what to do or where to go ? 
This is the experience of thousands, if not millions 
of men. What should have been done ? I'll tell 
you. The capitalist, when he was about to intro- 
duce a labor-saving machine into his shop, should 
have called his workingmen together, and said : 
" Grentlemen, I expect to bring an engine here on 
Monday to do most of the work for you. I don't 
wish to throw seventy-five of you out of employ- 
ment. If you will, within the next month, manu- 
facture with the machine as much more goods, over 
and above the amount that you have been making 
with your hands, as will return to me the entire cost 
of its construction, I will retain you all, and, fur- 
thermore, I will not ask you to manufacture more 
with this engine than before, bat if you can manu- 
facture the same amount in five, six or seven hours, 
very well, you can then quit, hoping that you will 
spend the rest of your time at home, reading and 
reflecting.^' 

If the introduction of every labor-saving machine 
had l)ceij accompanied with such acts of justice and 
magnanimity, every industrial establishment in the 



54 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

civilized world would now be working only about 
seven hours per day, labor would be better res- 
pected, men would not be black-listed and 
victimized; labor more contented and intelligent, 
society more secure, and our rights and liberties in 
less danger of being encroached upon by a " strong 
government/^ 

But capital has not done this. The desire of gain 
has stifled the thoughts of justice and generosity. 
Let us see how they have introduced labor-saving- 
machinery. The minute the machine starts the 
''boss" enters the shop, calls the hundred men 
together, and says: '• Gentlemen, I have set up a 
machine that will, with only twenty-five produce as 
much as all of you together ; seventy-five of you are 
discharged." The men seize their dinner buckets, 
and mournfully march out, the thoughts of home, 
of wife, and children weigh upon them; "where 
will we find another job to support our families," 
they ask one another. Let us try to forget the sad 
seventy-five for a moment, and return to the ''boss" 
and the other twenty-five. How many hours do 
these twenty-five have to labor now? Ten; the same 
as before. How much wages per day now? The 
same as before. How much can the twenty-five 
mth the machine produce ? The same amount as 
formerly. How much less cost to the capitalist ? 
The difference between the price of the labor of one 
hundred men and that of twenty-five. 

Suppose each of the one hundred was getting two 



LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 55 

dollars, making two liundred dollars per day. Sev- 
enty-five have left, leaving only twenty-five. Twenty- 
five times two are fifty. Fifty ft-om two hundred 
dollars leaves one hundred and fifty dollars, the 
diflerence in the cost of a day's production. Where 
does this one hundred and fifty dollars go ? For a 
month or two let it pay the cost of the machine. 
Afterwards the most of the hundred and fifty dollars 
runs daily and steadily into the pocket of the firm. 
Of course the manufacturer will sell his products a 
little cheaper, to underbid firm 'No. 2. Firm No. 2 
discovers that firm 'No. Ihas a labor-saving machine. 
Firm No. 2, in order to compete with firm No. 1, 
introduces one into his shop, throws seventy-five 
more out of employment; firm No. 3 has to do 
likewise, and so on adjinem. 

But after a while competition begins to shave 
down the one hundred and fifty dollars, and the 
manufacturers conclude that something should be 
done to stop the competition and keep the blessings 
of the labor-saving machines within the golden cir- 
cle of wealth. Boss No. 1, the most avaricious of 
the lot, calls a meeting of the rest; say ten shoe man- 
ufacturers. After preliminaries, the wage grinder 
rises and addresses the conclave thus : 

" Grentlemen, we are here to form an association 
to stop the scathing operations of competition in the 
shoe market. If w^e allow coi^.ipetition to reign, we 
can't bleed the public. On every pair of shoes the 
poor man should pay a tax. Were we to tax 



56 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

directly lie Vv'ould object, but indirectly we can 
safely bleed slowly and quietly every fiimily in the 
State. We are rich and have plenty of money, but 
we must have more. Genius has invented for us a 
labor-saving machine. It is true that this machine 
has driven thousands of industrious workmen from 
their trades, and caused many a mother and child 
to miss the comforts of a good home, but this 
machine can put one hundred and fifty dollars daily 
in our pockets, and in the mind of the model capital- 
ist of the nineteeiith century, the considerations of 
humanity always sink beneath those of gain. What 
care we where those discharged men are ? Whether 
they are wandering in quest of work, or earning a 
miserable pittance at some strange trade, is not a 
question for us to entertain. ''More" should be our 
motto. It is also true that we could and should sell 
a pair of shoes for a great deal less since the intro- 
chiction of this macliine, but I wotdd remind you 
that during the frosts and snows of winter children 
must have shoes, whether we exact two or three 
dollars, hence I am in favor of pinching according 
to the degrees of poverty, and charging the bleed- 
ing, freezing, bare-footed poor man's child about 
one dollar more than is reasonable and just. 
(ApplaudecL) Let us monopolize the trade, league 
ourselves ta prevent competition, get all the labor- 
saving machinery possible, discharge seventy-five 
per cent, of our men, compel the remainder to work 
ten hours as formerly, and also indirectly force 



LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 57 

them to spend their earnings in our ''pluck me/' 
In this Avay we can reduce the cost of a pair of shoes 
to two, sell the same for four dollars, and pocket 
the difference. (A^Dplause.) Another serious mat- 
ter. Since I have introduced my labor-saving 
machine, a man by the name of Smith is trying to 
get my men to strike for eight hours per day. I 
admit that the eight-hour system would be a bless- 
ing to our weary worn-out men, but it might reduce 
our profits a dollar or two, hence Smith is a dan- 
gerous man, and should in some way be put down. 
Let us call him a demagogue, buy a few wretches to 
dub him a fraud; hire some scribbler to lie him up 
as a blatant agitator and disturber of the peace, and 
have him arrested, disgraced, and incarcerated in 
prison.'' (Uproarious applause, during which the 
monopolist takes his seat.) 

The above speech contains the pith of the feelings 
and arguments of the average monopolist. 

A motion is made and unanimously carried to 
form an association. Another combination formed, 
and there is not a man, woman or child in the 
neighborhood but what is more or less taxed to 
support that ungodly monopoly. The capitalists 
will neither reduce the hours of labor nor the price 
of the article sufficiently to neutralize the effect of 
throwing so many men into other trades. The 
price of labor has been reduced by labor-saving 
machinery faster than the necessaries of life. The 
cost of living does not slide with the price of labor; 



58 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 

when wages lower, the cost of living is always 
behind; when wages advance, the price of neces- 
saries is always ahead. The difference has gone 
into the pockets of combinations, is still going and 
will go while the working people of this conntry 
and other countries cheapen their own labor by 
working ten hours per day. 

Be chary of your limbs and they will be better 
appreciated. The black-list and the victim '^spot" 
can never be abolished while there are four men lor 
three jobs. 

I have no objection against the labor-saving 
machine, none in the least; but I have an unquali- 
fied objection to capitalists using these children of 
genius and skill to depreciate and degrade labor, 
and run society on wheels into the risks and serious 
possibilities of industrial conflicts. 1 would not 
legislate against a labor-saving machine, and I want 
this distinctly understood, but I would cordially 
against long hours with the machine, and I want 
this also distinctly understood. I am attacking the 
abuse, not the instrument. 

Science, invention and skill should ease the tasks 
of labor, and add a joy or a comfort to the home of 
the humble. They have not done so, because 
wealth would not let them. Just as soon as the 
click of some new machine is heard, somebody 
hears the clink of the almighty dollar coming from 
the same direction. And here comes Edison with 
his electric light. Gas monopolies begin to trem- 



LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY. 59 

ble, tlie (lays of their plunder are numbered, and 
science has sealed their too long deferred doom. But 
scarcely does the glare of the electric light glow on 
the walks of Menlo Park before some millionaire 
monopolizes the discovery, the invention and its 
benefits. Mr. Edison may be recorded as one of 
the benefactors of the age and race. His discover- 
ies and inventions could make light cheap enough 
to reach the squalid tenements of the dark alleys 
and the mouldy cellars of the poorest in every city, 
l^ight will be made less propitious to robbery 
and murder ; hence safer to respectibility and inno- 
cence. 

-But in the hands of avaricious monopolies, useful 
inventions become the handy instruments of extor- 
tion, and what should be a blessing is turned into a 
burden upon the public. There are thoughts more 
divine than those of gain, there are feelings more 
sacred than those of greed, and there are aspirations 
loftier than those of wealth. But in the mind and 
heart of the average monopoly of our times, the 
grossest suggestions receive the tenderest attention. 
And yet there is no redress, nor is our government 
disposed to bridle the rapacity of these soulless com- 
binations. 

In the iron world the rays of genius are being 
intensely focalized upon a chemical process, by 
which an abundance of cheap fuel can be sup- 
plied from water; and the day may not be far 
distant when science and invention will render 



60 LABOR-SAVING MACHIKEHY. 

unnecessary one-half af tlie present amount of coal 
used in the manufacture of iron and steeL When 
the use of the electric light and the cheap fuel pro- 
cess becomes general, millions upon millions less 
bushels of coal will be consumed, hence thousands 
of miners will be thrown out of work. These 
unemployed men will crowd into other avenues to 
make labor more abundant everywhere ; the supply 
becomes greater than the demand, and wages must 
inevitably fall. IsTow be careful where you strike. 
Don't curse the genius and skill of man ; don't try 
to mob the new machine, but move for a propor- 
tionate reduction in the hours of labor. 

EIGHT HOURS. 

Man has a physical and a mental nature. The 
physical tends to keep him down to the coursj 
and sensual, the mental to lift him up into the beau- 
tiful and pure. Both natures should be systemati- 
cally developed, and where society, by its customs 
and laws, has overworked the physical, industrial 
derangement is the consequence. 

Strikes are indigenous to the physical nature of 
man, and the probabilities of a cessation of strife, 
will increase as the mental obtains sway over the 
physical. Tlie olive must have light as well as heat 
to flourish. The supply of heat is superabundant, 
but there is scarcely sufficient light. And as long- 
as man is obliged to tax his body for ten or eleven 



EIGHT HOURS. 61 

hours a day in the factory or mine, he cannot be ex- 
pected to develop his mind. He returns home more 
eager for his bed than his book. Hence the result is 
that a man's physical preponderates over his mental 
nature. No wonder that a person of such a compo- 
sition is more interested in a prize fight than a 
debate, in a physical than in a mental combat. 

The masses should be given more time for recre- 
ation and reflection. i.^ot an industrial wheel 
should turn after three o'clock in the afternoon of 
each working-day, and the Sabbath must be kept 
sacred and holy if only for the sake of the working- 
man. Stop the engine, stable the mules and shut 
up shop at three, and let the workiugman go home 
to rest, read and reflect. 

It may be said that workingman would not appre- 
ciate these spare hours. Some of them may not, 
but because a few abuse, that is no reason why oth- 
ers should be deprived of the benefit of what right- 
fully and justly belongs to them. There are men 
that spend their earnings foolishly, but this is no 
reason why capitalists should make serfs of human 
beings. What is ours, is ours to use or abuse, and if 
a few hours, set apart for the education and culture 
of the mind, can elevate the masses and thereby add 
to the intelligence and security of society, to pit the 
depreciation of a few against the appreciation of the 
many, would be to attack the fundamental princi- 
ples of social progress. 

The mind would soon begin to suggest means of 



62 EIGHT HOURS. 

self-culture. ITewspapers would multiply, books be 
bought, town reading rooms and libraries estab- 
lished, literary associations organized ; the mental 
would keep pace with the physical, and the result 
will be a diffusion of intelligence in the community 
that would give stability and prosperity to industry. 

And right here capital and labor should amalga- 
mate, to influence Congress to reduce the hours of 
labor. They are both equally interested in the mut- 
terings of the storm, which are periodically heard 
rumbling and sweeping over the surface of the 
industrial sea. The organizing and the banding 
together of large numbers of men are the results of 
a feeling of insecurity. They seek the union as a 
man would a lodge to escape an approaching storm. 
Trade appears to ebb and flow like the sea. Busi- 
ness booms and panics succeed each other, and men 
beo'in to regard these changes as certain. 

There have been many ingenious theories woven 
to try to account for these tides of prosperity. I 
believe that labor-saving machinery is the primary 
cause of the fevers and depressions of industry, and 
that as long as men continue to work long hours 
with the machinery, hard will follow good times as 
regular as night does the day. 

These strifes are symptoms of disease. They tell 
of some disturbing element at work beneath the 
surface of society. We blame men, but the person 
that does is short-sighted or unchamtable. Men are 
only puppets in the show, when a cause pulls the 



EIGHT HOUES. 63 

string, tliey have to dance, strike or fight. Human 
nature will not run into the flame if it can help 
itself. These industrial conflicts are the results of 
industrial abuses, and the legislative indiiference of 
the present is creating troubles and insecurity fo]- 
the future. Better ward off than risk the danger of 
hard times. Could we check the production fever 
by cutting ofi:* one-fifth of the labor, we might be 
able to prevent, or least delay a reaction and approx- 
imate the golden means that would produce neither 
panics nor booms, but a continued flow of healthy, 
prosperous times. 

The government will not forget the severe exper- 
ience of 1877, and especially is Pittsburgh anxious to 
prevent the repetition of such terrible scenes. 

Every additional rail spiked to a tie, and every 
wire swung on a telegraph pole, increases the nerv- 
ousness and excitability of the country. Railroads, 
that in good times minister to the convenience, 
comfort and pleasure of the people, in hard times 
become the ministers of agitation, riot and insurrec- 
tion. As in the olden times fires were kindled in 
succession on the hill-tops, to arouse the population 
to resistance, so in depressing and aggravating 
times, the signal for an industrial insurrection may 
run along the railway lines, leap from centre to cen- 
tre to arouse the passions of the vicious, and the 
hungry half of the population in the cities, to resist 
the laws of the state and nation, sweep awav the 
securities of life and property, and in one dav 



64 EIGHT HOURS. 

destroy the handsome accumulations of ten years of 
industry. Hatred for gigantic and extortionate 
monopolieSj and sympathy for the impoverished 
masses will again stand on the side-walk, or on the 
brow of the hill conniving at and cheering on the 
furious mob. Mad men will throw oil on the 
warehouses; the torch and the faggot will kindle 
destructive fires, and elevators become sheeted in 
flames. In their fury men burn down what they 
have built, and destroy the very things they are 
clamoring for. Call the militia and regulars out, 
and they will hesitate to shoot or bayonet their 
fellow-men. The government will in vain appeal 
for men; its proclamations become farces, and an 
heartless machine, Congress, will be caught, sha- 
ken and rent by the agitation and violence that has 
been created and nourished by its own infatua- 
tion. 

It may take a decade or a century to ripen a 
crisis, but a cause will produce an eflect. Disturb- 
ances are deplorable, but they have their causes, 
and if not removed are inevitable. Laws should 
be respected, lawlessness condemned, and peace 
maintained, but there have happened periods in the 
history of nations w^hen reason is dethroned and 
when the wild passions of men break down every 
bulwark of life and property. The statesman and 
patriot will not wink at a matter that has the alter- 
native of crippling the prosperity and destroying 
the peace of his country. 



EIGHT HOURS. 65 

Under our government, where reforms are so 
accessible to the people, timely legislation can inter- 
cept us from the severe experiences and disasters of 
other nations. In the past, legislation has willingly 
done nothing for the common people, save abridge 
their liberties, and violate their rights. Wealth has 
somehow been continually hood-winkijig the masses 
into the snares of poverty and ignorance. But 
in the history of the world you will find that 
there have been limits put upon the impositions 
and tyranny of the few. The forbearance of the 
industrial classes is not exhaustless, and when the 
wall is reached then truly do the majority rule, 
lie volution lias been the past pioneer of freedom and 
liberty has been bom and reared thus far, amid the 
throes of the human race. 

History relates that anarchy forced the enactment 
of the laws of Solon, that a Roman mob begot the 
Tribunes of the People, that the Magna Charta 
was the result of an insurrection , that the Ameri- 
can Republic is the child of a revolution, and that the 
emancipation of the slaA^es is the work of the rebel- 
lion. Legislation won't willingly do anything for 
Ireland nor for Russia, and may be it won't do much 
for the working people of even a free country. 
Shrewdness can impose upon stupidity, but the stu- 
pid can not be forever abused. The rich may for a 
while drug the poor to pilfer their earnings, but 
some time the poor will wake up to pursue and 
punish the rich. 

9 



66 EIGHT HOURS. 

The conditions of the masses are the effects of 
causes that have been quietly at work for a long 
time, some of them for many centuries. They are 
critical conditions, hence capitalists are nervous and 
cry for a strong government. A strong government 
may for a while draw tighter the chains and bind 
faster the fetters, but the strong man in the people 
will some day break every fetter as though they 
were only wisps of straw. 

It is the same old story over. Strip all past and 
present political parties of their sophistries, appeals 
and artifices, and you will find that really all nations 
are and have been divided into only the poor man's 
party, and the rich man's party. History very 
clearly establishes this fact. In Sparta we see the 
Spartan, the rich man, imposing on the Helot, the 
poor man; in Greece we see the Eupatrid, the rich 
man, imposing on the Diacrian, the poor man; 
under the Roman Republic we see the Patrician, 
the rich man," imposing on the Plebeian, the poor 
man; in France the aristocrat,*the rich man, impos- 
ing on the peasant, the poor man ; in Ireland we 
see the landlord, the rich man, oppressing the pea- 
sant, the poor man ; in England the lord, the rich 
man, imposing on the farmer, the poor man, and 
under the American Republic we find the monop- 
olist, the rich man, imposing on the laborer,* the 
poor man. The present aristocratic tendencies of 
our government are a repetition of former times; 
the Present appears to be a stereotyped copy of the 



EIGHT HOURS. 67 

Past, and the deep rut into which the American 
Republic has been dragged, is the identical rut that 
has lead all republics of the past into ruin, and their 
populations under the yokes of the tyrant. 

Read historj^ When the poor debtors of Greece 
rose up in rebellion against the extortion and 
tyranny of their creditors, what did Solon do ? Didn't 
he order that seventy-five drachmas should pay a 
debt df one hundred ? Did he not take a sponge 
and Avipe out all encumbrances from the lands of 
poor ? [See Grote's History of Greece, vol III, 
pages 99 and 100.] Solon, the great law giver of 
Greece, now venerated for his justice and integrity, 
did these things, which proves him to be a more 
extreme repudiationist than any banker has ever 
dreamed of. And yet Solon was ''an honorable 
man." 

Repudiation is nothing new, but as old as extor- 
tion, and while monopolies bleed the people, the 
horrid ghost of repudiation will make its periodical 
visitations into the halls of legislature. Extortion 
is the cause, repudiation is the effect ; prevent or 
remove the one, and the otlier cannot follow. A 
repudiationist is not a more unnatural individual 
than an extortionist. The existence of the former 
in hard times, and the latter in good times, are 
equally deplorable. But that one will follow the 
other is as certain as punishment follows the viola- 
tion of natural laws. 

Read also Roman history, and notice the si mi- 



68 EIGHT HOURS. 

larity between the struggies of the Plebeians against 
tlie Patricians, and those of labor against capliai 
thus far, and the conditions and circumstances aj-c 
favorable to a completion of the parallel. Oppre?^- 
sive muncipal taxation is gathering the fuel and 
drying the timber to expedite the Hame. Couple 
this with the fact that our industries are exti-eniely 
sensible to the shocks of panics. The v are the tirst to 
paralyze, the last to recover. Thousajids of work- 
ingmen may be thrown out of ^vork in a month. 
They can't save much even in good times: direct 
and indirect tax bills are too numerous and burden- 
some. ^ Idleness entails immediate poverty; the 
poor become jealous of the rich, communistic 
ideas are forced to rise to the surface, tramps 
become common, labor begins to suspect that 
capital has been in some way imposing upon her, 
want and distress dethrone reason, incendiarism 
begins to talk loudly, and now the rashness of one 
man may set the mob to sack the town and burn 
costly buildings to the ground. 

Pittsburgh is socially and financially interested in 
this labor problem, and more so than any city iij 
the United States. During good times her popula- 
tion is contented, peacable and patriotic, but the 
severity of hard times may make her people restless, 
riotous and rebellious. The extravagance and 
rapacity of past muncipal officials have chained this 
and other cities to the helpless condition of a 
despairing debtor. 



EIGHT HOURS. 69 

This fact is a serious one to the workingman^ the 
merchant and the manufiictiirer. We are all inter- 
ested in extracting the cities, the states and the 
nation out of debt. The capitaUst as well as the 
laborer wishes no more panics, no more distress, no 
more riots. The security of one is the security of 
all, andeve" ' lover of continued contentment should 
make an effort to make the good times regular, 
cool and permanent. 

This ''boom'' is a boost. It is spasmodic, excited 
and transitory. It w^on't last long. Everybody 
seems to believe this, hence the indiscriminate grab 
for a share while it lasts. The production from all 
these labor-saving machines, running almost day 
and nirfit, with men workino; alono- with them as 
many hours per day now as before they were intro- 
duced, is almost inconceivable, is gormandizing tlie 
consuming powers of the age, hence surfeit and a 
reaction must take place sooner or later. 

. Then while we are excited, speculation revives, 
capitalists begin to trust one another, the credit i al- 
loon distends, its sides grow thinner and\,caker, 
and some day when we are gazing with admiration 
upon the trust-me balloon lioating with apparent 
ease and safety, it will burst and fall flat to the 
ground. Some great capitalist will again fail, his 
paper becomes worthless, the mill owner that holds 
his, notes becomes a bankrupt; furnaees will be 
blown out, the mills closed, men sent home, no coal 
needed, hence the miners thrown out of work. 



70 EIGHT HOURS, 

Thus with everything. Industries falling like a row 
of bricks, and Pittsburgh left weeping and discon- 
solate for her smoke and fires. 

Can't we do something to lengthen out the good 
and prevent the periodical recurrence of bad times? 

Suppose we try a national eight-hour law. What 
will be the eflect? Let us see. Labor regulates 
the amount of industrial production, that is to say, 
the more the hours the more the production, and 
vice versa. Beyond a certain limit this statement is 
not correct, it having been demonstrated that a man 
can produce more in eleven than in twelve hours 
per day. But we assume it sufficiently correct for 
present purpose. Hence by reducing the hours to 
eight, the production of the country would neces- 
sarily be diminished one-fifth, pro^7ided that no 
more men work eight than were formerly working 
ten hours. To produce the same amount as ten 
hours it would require one workman for every four 
to make up for the two hours cut o& from each 
man's former day's labor. Briefly, an eight-hour 
law would either reduce the daily production one- 
fifth, or make room for one-fifth more workers. 

This process would increase the cost of produc- 
tion, but a rising market could neutralize the defier- 
ence, if not entirely wipe it out, by raising wages 
by reducing the length of a day's work. If the 
workingmen of this country, during the ascendency 
of the '^'boom," instead of demanding ten per cent, 
added to the figure of a day's wages, would hereafter 



EIGHT HOURS. 71 

demand ten per cent, reduction in the length of a 
day's labor for the same figure, they would find 
themselves better ofl:* in the end. 

Suppose the miners, after they have reached the 
average wages of three dollars per day, are oflfered 
twenty per cent, pf an advance. What should they 
do ? Accept the three dollars and sixty cents for 
ten or the old figure for eight hours ? 

Accept the three sixty for ten and every store- 
keeper, and boarding mistress in the land would be 
infatuated with the hig price, raise every necessary 
twenty per cent, and your sixty cents advance is a 
minus on pay day. Men from other countries, 
hearing of your apparent great prosperity with 
every steamer and from other trades, would come 
to crowd every mine and factory, flood the labor 
market, and your twenty per cent, advance departs, 
not in peace, but after a disastrous strike. 

Choose the other course. Sell your eight hours 
for three dollars and go home. Let the figure 
remain the same, but lessen the leugth of a day's 
toil, and you will neither excite the store-keeper nor 
tickie the boarding mistress with a delusive price. 
The ^'pluck me" may be enraged at the idea of 
a miner going home two hours earlier to read a 
book instead of furnishing the twenty per cent, 
extra earnings for its greed, but anything that can 
damage a company store can benefit a miner, and 
three'^ dollars for eight hours is better than tln^ee 
dollars and sixty cents for ten when the sixty cents 



72 EIGHT HOURS. 

is deducted by a raise in the necessaries of life. 
Financially the workingman with the eight hours 
would be equally as w^ell off, and socially and men- 
tally vastly improved. 

The capitalist would be benefitted. If he is able 
to ofier twenty per cent, of an advance and the oper- 
ative prefers to appreciate his labor by working 
twenty per cent, fewer hours for the same price 
than by working the same number of hours for the 
twenty per cent, advance in money, one-fifth of the 
production would be necessarily reduced, and the 
demand being the same, the price of the remainmg 
eighty per cent, would rise to additionally swell the 
margin. li' the same amount of production is nec- 
essary, the eight-hour sj- stem would give a better 
life prospect to twenty per cent, more men, and 
instead of four-fifths of the aggregate working pop- 
ulation of the civilized world doing the work of 
five-fifths, thereby overtaxing their physical and 
sapping their mental energies, crumbling every 
hope for their social elevation, and mercilessly 
crowding out the remaining one-fifth of their fellow- 
men from a comfortable place and portion at the 
table of nature, instead of this sad spectacle, we 
would have every industrious worker employed at a 
living and an elevating wage, intelligence thriving, 
the number of strikes rapidly diminishing, and a 
corresponding prospect of industrial tranquility and 
a permanent social security. 

But if eight hours is good, why not make six bet- 



EIGHT HOUES. 73 

ter or four best? Now you are at the other 
extreme, and the man that advocates an extreme in 
the length of a day's work is either a tyrant or a 
drone. The steamer is safest midway between the 
shoals, and experience teaches that the golden mean 
is the best path of conduct. 

Besides, the cost of production must be taken 
into consideration. For the workingmen of this 
country to make the cost oi an article a bar to its 
entrance into any market, would be neitlier politic 
nor patriotic. Foreign products may compete with 
domestic, and, as the price of labor is an important 
item in the cost of an article, so it should receive 
serious consideration in the councils of the working- 
men. And the fact of foreign labor being able to 
compete with domestic labor, has given birth to the 
idea of an international labor union, which, how- 
ever Utopian it may at present seem, is none the less 
desirable. Trans-oceanic telegraph wires are, like 
nerves, connecting the labor markets of the world, 
and steam navigation can supply human labor on 
short notice. A superior industrial condition in 
any quarter of the globe is a signal for immigration, 
and unskilled workmen are, like the waves of the 
sea, tossed backward and forward by some great 
cause. 

The past and continued introduction of labor- 
saving machinery is brooding disturbances and inse- 
curities for the civilized world. Sooner or later the 
necessity of industrial reform will force itself upon 

lO 



74 EIGHT HOURS. 

the attention of national legislatures. It may take 
a crisis. The working people of, at least, the Uni- 
ted States, through their suffrages, can intercept 
that crisis. But it is a question whether they will 
do so. They cannot if they are to be gulled, 
blinded and divided in the future as they have been 
in the past. As a consequence of political division, 
they are now on the smooth grade, drifting toward 
the bottom of society, into a condition most unde- 
sirable. It takes an almost superhuman agency to 
peacably stop and turn back a mass of^ human 
beings on a down grade tendency. In time, the indus- 
trial classes should unitedly act. It is easier to pre- 
vent than to cure, and it is easier to resist aristo- 
cratic tendencies to-day than to tolerate or dethrone 
an intended aristocracy to-morrow. In the language 
(slightly changed) of an address presented under cir- 
cumstances like the present, to the Signiory of^ the 
Florentine Republic, to be found in the works of 
Machiavelli, ''I entreat you to do now, by the mild 
efficacy of the ballot, what you will, by delay, com- 
pel yourselves to do by the power of the sword. '^ 
And should ever the black and unfortunate day 
dawn upon the destinies of the American people, 
when their Republic must make room' for a king or 
an emperor, it will not be because the workingmen 
had no chance to protect their free institutions, but 
because they were too stupid to see or too careless 
to ward off the dangers from their liberties. 



TRADES UNIONS. 76 

But in the meantime the working people may 
materially better their condition by forming and 
maintaining trades nnions for their government and 
protection. If Congress will not spread its supreme 
wing over all the trades, let single trades organize, 
to lift up their members to a better and higher 
plan^ of life. 

The intention of unionism is to protect the mem- 
bers from real or supposed imposition from the 
employer, and to prevent competition among work- 
ingmen. Hence a trade union to be successful, 
should comprehend wdthin its membership all that 
sell a kind of labor, as, for instance, mining labor; 
and hence a national union of the miners is an abso- 
lute necessity for their symetrical elevation. You 
tell me that a national association is an impossibility, 
and I will tell you that the permanent elevation of 
the miners is an impossibility. 

Local unions may be made effective, especially 
when any trade is isolated, but they should be 
bridled from extremes. Whenever the price of 
labor is boosted in one, in rushes the cheaper labor 
from other sections to drag it down. The means 
for swift traveling has made the labor markets very 
nervous. Suppose the wires would flash the news 
that the Pittsburgh or the Scranton miners are get- 
ting ten dollars per day. What would be the 
result ? Thousands of strangers would flock within 
a week to flood the market and pull the price down 
to the level of all. And it would make very little 



76 TRADES UNIONS* 

difference how mucli you would grin and growl, 
how stubborn the strike, how many wails would 
go up from the needy and suffering, or how many 
lives poured out in the conflict, you will find that 
the law of supply and demand will always come out 
victorious. 

Suppose again that miners are getting five dollars 
per day, and all other workingmen only three dol- 
lars. "What would be the consequence? Thou- 
sands from other trades would crowd every mine in 
the country. The farmer would leave his farm to 
dig coal, the shoemaker his shop, the helper his 
mill, and the inevitable would be a reduction in the 
price of mining. Thus with any other kind of 
labor. Hence the danger of one trade exceeding 
the prosperity of another. To make any advance 
permanent and solid at any given location, there 
must be a proportionate advance in all other trades. 
Hence the advisable policy for all trades to pull 
harmoniously together. And if I had my way of 
running a national union of any trade I would never 
allow the members to strike for price, I would 
direct them to cut off the supply, by working fewer 
hours. The price of labor, like the price of any 
other commodidity, is decreed and regulated by the 
rate of supply and demand, it cannot be permanently 
fijxed by any man or combination of men, and in a 
certain'^ condition of the labor market, no number 
of strikes and lockouts, however stubborn, can altar 
the fijD^ure of their labor. 



TRADES UNIONS. 77 

Instead of blindly striking at the effect we should 
strike at the cause. We have been trying to kill 
the poisonous weeds, not by the destructive uproot- 
ing process, but by the preservative clipping pro- 
cess. Ins-ead of working with the laws of trade, 
we have been industriously working against them. 
This will never do. It is not witliin the power of 
man to build an organization that can long with 
impunity transgress the laws of the universe. Men 
may for a while, with apparent ease and safety, 
interfere with t!ie order of nature, but the longer 
they do the more severe the punishment, and its 
coming is only a matter of time. Throw up a 
stone; while that stone ascends it violates the laws 
of gravitation, but when its force is spent it is 
hurled back by the same law with a vengeance that 
w^ould strike dead the man that threw it. Thus it 
has been with trades unions of the past. Like rockets 
they have gone up, like rockets they have exploped, 
but like stones they have fallen to the ground, deal- 
ing defeat and disaster upon all. 

Now, I couldn't within the compass of this work, 
trace out the causes for the rise and fall of trades 
unions. That subject would draw into its consider- 
ation the moral, intellectual and financial condition 
of the masses, and would almost extend to a history 
of the rise and fall of the people. I have to let that 
pass with only a mention of one of the reasons. 

All unions have tried to regulate the price of 
labor by a process directly the reverse of that used 



78 TRADES UNIONS. 

by nature. They have been trying to choke the 
spring by throwing clods on its month instead of by 
nndermining its sources. They have all along been 
endeavoring to sink the floods of labor without 
closing the valves of supply. It is something like a 
blind man bailing water from a tank. He sweats 
and splashes all day. Next morning he goes at it 
again, and by sunset he may have sunk it two 
inches from the edge, but by the following morn- 
ing it runs over. After a little rest he throws oif 
his coat, tightens his belt, and under the force of 
impulse and excitement, makes another dash and 
splash, and that man is yet at the tank and the tank 
is just as full as ever. He does not know that a 
supply pipe is feeding that tank, and that within his 
reach there is a little wheel that with a few turns 
can shut ofl' the water and save him a vast amount 
of work and worry. That man was blind, and to 
bel pain, this is about the condition of the miners. 
We have been ignorant of the laws of trade, like 
blind men w^e have been feeling in the dark, and 
to be plainer still, I don't think that our eyes are yet 
open to our own interests. 

The labor markets of the world are just as flooded 
as ever. We have been trying to make labor 
scarce by making it more abundant. We have 
been trying to lower the troubled waters, but have 
utterly failed. As in the times of the deluge, w^e 
have sent doves out to seek good tidings, but they 
have returned with no olive leaves in th^ir mouths. 



TRADES UNIONS. 79 

The hills are covered, the valleys of the land lie 
deep ill the floods of labor, organizations have come 
and gone, labor champions have ranted, workingmen 
have struck, many a brave but rash man has been 
penned in prison, others killed in the conflict, yet 
all have been in vain, as the floods to-day are as 
high as ever. Like the blind man at the tank, we 
have been ignorant of the supply pipe pouring into 
the market more labor than tlie demand pipe can 
pour out. As yet we have not seen the wheel of 
restriction which controls the supply, or having 
seen it, we have been unable to put it in practice. 

Let us do away with petty, local strikes. Let us 
not waste our funds, energies and time in striking 
at that which cai] help us not. Let us combine, let 
us amalgamate, let us patiently work and Avait until all 
are willing and ready, if it takes three or five years, 
and some election morning, with a peacable deter- 
mination, let us all crowd around the polls to vote 
for a reduction in the hours of labor, release the 
body from one-fifth of its toils, give one-fifth more 
time' and attention to the cultivation of the mind, 
then our emancipation will be achieved, our inde- 
pendence secured, and the gradual elevation of the 
workino-men of the United States o^naranteed. 

And now you may say that it is impossible to 
control the masses, and hence Utopian and tantaliziii r 
for me to talk about an eight-hour law. In reply I 
will say, that if it is impossible to control the wi^i-k- 
iugmeii of this country, it will be impossible to 



80 TRADES UNIONS. 

reduce the hours of labor. It must be done gener- 
ally, it cannot be done locally. For one section to 
attempt a reduction alone, would be to commit an 
industrial suicide. It won't do for eitlier operative 
or operator. We must have a national organiza- 
tion, and if we can't go to work to form and main- 
tain a strong national association to control the 
supply of labor, put it down as a certainty that we 
can't regulate the labor market, and if we can't 
control the labor market we can't control the 
price, and if Ave can't control the price we will 
alwaj^s be at the mercy of the winds and storms of 
the social sea, sometimes above and sometimes 
beneath the crest of the wave, and gradually the 
w^orkingmen will sink to the bottom, and, because 
they can't go farther, they will be kept there to 
grovel in poverty, ignorance and servitude. 

Long hours with labor-saving machinery is 
degrading, shorter hours work with labor-saving 
machinery, would elevate labor, morally, intellectu- 
ally and financially. 

Now, can we establish and maintain a national 
labor or political organization ? The answer to this 
question involves the consideration of the moral and 
intellectual condition of the masses. What of the 
past? We have failed. What of the future ? Let 
us hope for the best. 

EDUCATION. 

Let us go to work with a will to better our mental 



EDUCATION. ' 81 

condition. Intelligence is needed and necessary. 
Enlightenment is essential to the growth and 
safety of our republic. "We must have more light. 
Workingmen are being hurried through life without 
seeing any of its beauties or tasting its pleasures. 
Mature is impartial, and spreads before all an unlim- 
ited store of pleasure. But we must delve for it. 
Xo study, no pleasure, is a rule of nature. Zoology 
will uncover the curiosities of the animal, and min- 
ology will reveal the structures of the mineral king- 
dom. Botany unfolds the beauties of the vegetable 
world, the buds and blossoms of spring, the flow- 
ers of summer and the tints of autumn. 

The study of nature expands the intellect, softens 
and sweetens the heart, and lifts the whole man up 
from the material and coarse to the spiritual and the 
beautiful. Fewer hours' labor and more study 
should be the workingman's motto. Astronomy 
would turn your eyes toward the stars, and mng 
yoiir thoughts to the realms of. space, to meditate on 
the grand organization of the universe. The peb- 
l)les and the rocks have attractions, and the streams, 
pushing their way over brush and stone, teach 
lessons of prudence and perseverence. Scholars 
have crept into coal mines, to seek pleasure from the 
order and nature of strata, and more pleasure can be 
extracted from our surroundings than many work- 
ingmen^have ever dreamed of. Buy a geology, go 
home at three to studj^ it, and next morning every 
slip and slate and slide will yield pleasure to the 
II 



82 EDUCATION* 

mind. The work of the miner, in the dark pit, 
where nature has stored the useful minerals, can he 
made as pleasurable as that of the painter. iMiiii>'le 
more of the intellectual with the physical in the 
labor cup, and the life of the wage-worker will be- 
come a joy, instead of a tolerable burden. Less of 
the pick and shovel for the body, and more reading 
and reflection for the mind, is w^hat the miner badly 
needs. 

Books culture, pictures refine, and music divines 
the human soul. A bare and cheerless house chills 
the loftiest aspirations, but a comfortable, beautiful 
home prompts thoughts that tend to elevate human 
nature. 

The perusal of a biography, may kindle and fan a 
spark of emulation in ilie breast of some poor man's 
boy, that may lift and lead him to become the bene- 
factor of his class. The study of physiology or a 
few health primers w^ill arm the family with cautions 
and preventatives against sickness, frequently ward 
off disease and death from the sacred precincts of 
home, and prevents many a fever and plague that 
. are now sacreligiously attributed to the visitations 
of Providence. 

History will unfold the checkered experiences of 
the past, lead us through the graveyard of nations, 
relate the causes of their rise and fall, from what 
cause or misfortune this or that government per- 
ished, teach the omens of national danger, make us 
more vigilant about our rights and liberties, and 



EDUCATION. 83 

vastly more competent to safely guide onr country 
through the perils and mutations of the future. 

The population of this country is composed of 
niany elements from the nations of Europe, where 
the masses have no chance to learn anything but 
submission to arrogant masters. If there is any 
lack of intelligence among our naturalized citizens 
it is not because we are more stupid, but because 
unfortunately we have been oppressed and held in 
ignorance by the monarchial and imperial system of 
the old world. And although here, in anew and lil)- 
eral world, far from the oppression of kings and 
landlords, yet the effects, like leaden weights, weigh 
down our lives, tending to drag us into dependent 
and servile conditions. These effects are to be worn 
away by time, with patience and by contact with 
the privileges and benefits of free institutions. And 
if this generation cannot entirely wear away from its 
existence the last link of European despotism, surely 
in a land of free schools, free press and free church. 
the coming and rising generations can be reared 
up to become intelligent, temperate and independ- 
ent. 

Educate the youth. As it is easier to bend the 
plant than the tree, so is it easier to train up the child 
to studious and temperate habits than to reform an 
ignorant and a dissolute man. Our country is 
not safe, neither can labor be properly protected, 
while both are enveloped in the clouds '' The former 
will have her plunderers, the latter her extortioners, 



84 , EDUCATION. 

wtiile neither can see the approach, or understand 
the crafty operations of its enemies. 

When the night is dark, the robber is bold, nei- 
ther, when heard, can he be easily seen nor caught, 
but when the night is clear, and studded with many 
stars, the thief grows timid, can be easily seen and 
caught; so when the night that broods over the 
destinies of the masses becomes studded w^ith thou- 
sands of greater and lesser intellectual lights, the 
public plunderer and the private extortionist can be 
the more easily shadowed and arrested, and will 
then less easily escape the odium and punishment 
which such malefactors justly deserve. Intelligence 
is the first condition of personal independence, it is 
the only preservative of liberty, and human rights 
are safe and unencroachable only when under the 
keen and vigilant eye of an enlightened public. 

It is never too late to mend man's condition, but 
at some time there must be a beginning. 

Reforms travel slowly, and what this generation 
would begin must be completed centuries hence. 
Be careful of the little boy and girl that to-day ton- 
dies around you. Be jealous of the minds of the 
children, for their hopes and the hopes of our 
republic are wi^pped up in their education. Send 
them to school, give them a chance to know more 
than their fathers, and to become intelligent and 
influential citizens. Don't neglect the mind of the 
boy by allowing him to run round the alluring streets. 
Don't chill his aspirations by refusing him a book, 



EDUCATION. ~~ 85 

and don't blast perhaps the budding genius of a 
Washhigton, a Lineohi, a Gladstone or an Emmett, 
b/ taking 3'our ten j^ear old boy from the school 
desk into the mine or factory. I have seen little 
boys, early in the morning, going to the pit, scarcely 
able to carry their dinner buckets, anci truly unable 
to Jceep them from truckling on the ground. I 
have seen other little boys leaving school w^hen 
the work started up, v^dth tears glistening in their 
bright eyes, because ''papa'' must take them from 
their books into the coal mine. I felt tliat some of 
these boys would rise up to become scholars, and 
brilliant leaders, if left at school; but I shall never 
hear of them any more; premature manual labor 
has stunted and dwarfed their intellects, and depend- 
ence lias buried them forever in the great sea of 
humanity. As the buoys rise above the water, and 
are better seen when tossed by the waves, so some 
of these little children would have risen above the 
common level, and amid the constant sur2:ino: of 
human affairs, climb into distinction and fame. 

But the heartless poverty entailed upon many fam- 
ilies by the present unjust discriminative social con- 
stitutions, compels parents to remove their children 
from the elevating influences of schools and books, 
into the influences of the mine and factory, that, to 
the young, cannot but be degrading, thereby not 
onl}^ blasting the aspirations and hopes, but also 
dooming the maturer mind of the rising generation 
to become a barren and a cheerless waste, product- 



86 EDUCATION. 

ive of notliing save suspicion, prejudices, super- 
stitions, and everytliing that makes anytliing but a 
responsible and an independent citizen. 

As great a support as your boy may be to the 
family, and hoAvever hard it may be to take him 
from the pit, I wisli to state mj^ opinion that such 
policy can not pay in the end, and I hereby record 
my solemn protest against any miner blastino; the 
hopes of his boy by putting him into the pit before 
he is fourteen years of age. jSTature alone will yield 
about as many blockheads as is necessary ; man 
need not manufacture any, and, if your boy is to be 
one, it is time enough to settle that point when he 
becomes fourteen years of age. Don't settle it as 
soon as he can Avalk. 

Send the children to school. Eemember that in 
fifteen years from now they will be men and women, 
and that the mental condition of the wage popula- 
tion of twenty years hence will have almost every- 
thing to do with, the then social and financial 
status of the masses of the United States. We must 
read, reflect and think more for ourselves. We 
should be more independent; that is to say, no 
workino'man should allow himself to be turned or 
tossed by every breath that comes from shriveled 
lips of passion. The sopistry of the educated, as 
well as the rantings of the ignorant are equally 
dangerous. The citizen should be proof against both, 
and the judgment should not be blinded by either. 

Ignorance is the overpowering and unrelenting 



EDUCATION. Si 

eiieuiy of labor. It is the mill-stone that has drag- 
ged and is holding the laboring masses to the bot- 
tom of society, and it is the dense and bhick curtain 
behind which corrupt anci crafty politicians are daily 
laying the wires, writing appeals and weaying soph- 
istries to mislead, diyide and entrap the mas: e 3 into 
the meshes of poyerty, dependence and subjection, 
Ignorance is the tree of evil, the pet tree of eyery 
deyotee of the odious doctrine of "the diyine right of 
kings " to rule and rob the common people. Anto- 
crats, emperors, monarchs, and the entire lazy line of 
aristocrats that, from time immemorial, haye been 
fattening themselyes on the substance of the hard- 
working men of eyery land; all these, who so 
arrogantly and profanely call themselyes lords, are, 
and always haye been the zealous friends of iono- 
ranee, and the sincere foes of popular education. 
Ignorance is the lash ydth which the oppressors of 
mankind haye cowed the poor into subjection, driy- 
en them from deseryed homes of pleasure into the 
huts and shanties of poyerty, forced them to liye 
amid the rags and crumbs of want, streaked the 
past with the poor men's blood, rent the hearts of 
the poor men's wiyes and children, and, to satisfy 
personal reyenge and ambition, they haye made his- 
tory almost a serial tale of war, suffering and woe. 

Had intelligence been as thick and as uniyersal 
as ignorance, kings could neyer haye made, out of 
innocent men, such bloody instruments. 

From the tree of ignorance emanate secretions 



88 EDUCATION. 

wiiieli poison the sources of liappiness ; beliincl its 
trunk skulk the enemies of labor ; among its leaves 
hide the malignant insects of jealousy, prejudice and 
envy^ and around its roots lurk the envenomed 
snakes of malice. These are alwaj's watching for a 
chance to belie the intentions, to desparage the 
worth, to blacken the character of great and good 
men, and with their fangs quivering in every direc- 
tion, they seek the best time and place to hiss 
deadly poison into the pure streams of mutual con- 
fidence. 

These are the pliable instruments that cunniug 
and unscrupulous manipulators use to break up 
labor oro'anizations, divide tlie world no-men at the 
polls, and through such means have the avaricious 
successfully foisted upon the poor and unlearned of 
every age, laws which played governments into the 
hands of the few, and wdiich have caused the decay 
and the destruction of all past republics. We must 
uproot and kill these evils. They are the malignant 
enemies of labor and the republic. Like poisonous 
weeds, they choke the little germs of organization. 
Thev infect all nationalities. Evervw^here thev 
scatter seeds of discord among the workingmen, and 
they have abandoned labor and the republic to the 
sport and prey of monopolies and corruption. They 
contaminate virtue, adulterate the fellowship of the 
union ; like a cancer they eat into the workingmen's 
common bond of interest, and these things they do 
in proportion to the ignorance in w^hich the mind 



EDUCATION. 89 

is enveloped. As the approach and the ascendency 
of the sun hurries the murderer and thief to his den, 
drives into their hiding places the prowling beasts 
of nighty pierces the veiling clouds, and sheds equal 
light and sunshine on the pathways of rich and 
poor, so will the approach and ascendency of gen- 
eral intelligence expel extortion and poverty from 
the homes of the masses, uproot their prejudices and 
suspicions, mitigate their dissensions, and vastly 
better enable them to discriminate, select and 
demand those laws which are ' most likely to work 
out the most happiness to the greatest number. 

Popular education is the lever that is to elevate 
labor. As long as good schools dot the hill-sides, 
and are the objects of vigilance and solicitude in the 
cities, and as long as the masses are kept in such a 
financial condition as to comfortably enable "tliem 
to send their children to school until at least four- 
teen years of age, there w^ill remain substantial hopes 
for the preservation and perfection of representative 
governments, and the gradual elevation of the 
masses. 

As heirs to this costly legacy of freedom, w^e 
should be more thoughtful and conscientious under 
the grave responsibilities which the republic imposes 
upon every citizen. The establishment and unity 
of this nation has cost a vast amount of biood and 
treasure ; ^ its preservation and improvement will 
probably cost a great deal more ; but when, after 
all that has and can be expended, posterity will set- 

12 



90 EDUCATION. 

tie down to balance accounts, they will find that a 
great and genuine republic, flourishing on the west- 
ern hemisphere, is worth every sacrifice of blood 
and treasure, to the liberation and the elevation of 
the human race. The hopes of the friends of liberty 
everywhere centre on our country, toward the first 
century of our experience they turn for example, 
precept and inspiration, and the irresistable current 
of liberal ideas, which constantly flows from our 
schools and literature is irrigating foreign fields of 
political thought, gradually wearing away the arbi- 
trary governments of the old world, and as gradu- 
ally laying in their stead the ground ideas on which 
liberated peoples are to rear up the grand super- 
structures of republics. 

As citizens invested with unparalleled political 
privileges, we should be anxious for the retention 
in the public conscience of the natural and revealed 
partitions between right and wrong, upon which 
justice, public integrity and security rests, and as 
members of one universal family, to whom the 
experiment of self-government has been sacredly 
entrusted, we should be more independent and vig- 
ilant for the correction, the improvement, and the 
approximation of our republic to that ideal repre- 
sentative government, which, for the least sacrifice 
of personal liberty, will retur:! the most happiness 
to the greatest number of its people. 



APPENDIX. 

I subjoin the following suggestions: 

1st. — That where any industrial establiphm^nt has 
a fair prospect of existing five years, the working- 
men shall erect a suitable two-story building at some 
convenient and central location, the first floor to be 
occupied by a workingmen's co-operative store and 
the second story to be kept for the w^orkingmen's 
Library, Literary, Debating, Beneficial and Protect- 
ive Association. 

2d. — That the Co-operative Store be incorporated 
under the laws of the Commonwealth. 

3d. — That the treasurer be put under heavy 
bonds. 

4th. — That the store he conducted on the Eoch- 



92 APPENDIX. 

dale plan. That is to say : the net proceeds shall 
be divided in proportion to amount purchased by 
each individual. 

5th. — That the Literary and Debating Associa- 
tion shall meet at least twice every calender month. 

6th. — That the workingmen's children shall be 
trained up to declaim, read, compose and debate. 

7th. — That under the government of the Literary 
Association, males and females shall have equal 
privileges. 

8th. — That in the Library all kinds of non-secta- 
rian, pure books shall be kept. 

9th — That all sorts of non-sectarian periodicals 
and newspapers be kept on file. 

10th. — That the number of papers of each politi- 
cal party be kept always equal. 

11th. — That the building, together with all appur- 
tenances, shall be held in trust by the w^orkingmen, 
entirely under their control, and especially used for 
their financial and intellectual elevation. 

12th. — That w^orkingmen be always encouraged 
to combine small savings, to lease or purchase the 
material and machinery, run their own industries, 
and divide the net profits among themselves. 



APPENDIX. 



93 



Precedence and Is'ature of Motions. 







. ! 








.X 6 


o 






f ''^ 


rO 


1 


MAME. 


i 1 








c P 


< 



^ r 

Ij 

IL 



'So 



[Motion to adjourn, 

; Personal privilege motions, 

lOrders of the day, 

To appeal, - - 

To read papers, - 

iTo withdraw another motion, 

:To suspend rules, 

I To kiy on the tal-le, 

;a. To previous quesrion, 

b, To postpone indefinitely, 

c, To commit, 

d, T-o postpone definitely, 

e, To amend an amendment 



137 


not 


Mlj is 


142 is 


lo4| is 


160i is 


leii is 


163: is 


1711 is 


1741 not 


176l is 


182 


is 


185 


IS 


186 


is 



not 

not 

not 

not 

not 

not 

not 

not 

not 

is 

is 

is 

not 



EXPLANATION OF TABLE. 

The motions a, b, c, d and e, are inferior to all 
above tliem, but partly equal among tliemselves. 

All motions with ''a" opposite are equals, and for 
these the rule is, first made, first put ; so with mo- 
tions with ''b" opposite, &c. When there are no 
letters denoting quality between two or more, all 
motions take precedence absolutely in the order ar- 
ranged. 

The numbers refer to section in manual. 

The words ''is'' and ''not" state nature of motion, 
whether debatable or amendable. 



94 APPENDIX. 

The foregoing table was carefully compiled from 
Cushing's small manual to explain a lecture upon 
'^ Parliamentary Law," delivered before the miners 
of Six-Mile Ferry, during the winter of 1879. It 
may be serviceable to workingmen in their deliber- 
ations, and with this hope it is appended. 



